


The Death of Ben Solo

by dentigerous, wraithnoir



Series: The Corruption of Ben Solo [7]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Past Abuse, Rough Sex, The Dark Side of the Force, This is the end of it! Such an accomplishment, lots of pain and abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2017-05-25
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:11:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 52,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8775361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dentigerous/pseuds/dentigerous, https://archiveofourown.org/users/wraithnoir/pseuds/wraithnoir
Summary: There are more disturbances in the nearby systems and General Hux and Lord Ren are dispatched to lead the counter assaults. Where they go, destruction follows. There is no room for half measures in the First Order. They return to Star Killer, and prepare for the end of the Republic. When it finally happens, they turn their sights to the Resistance...but the Resistance comes to them.The final installment of the Corruption Arc.





	1. Chapter 1

The Botaran system had initially put up a good fight against the First Order. That had been five years ago when the Order had swept its way through the outermost edges of the Outer Rim and then had made the planets and moons of the Unknown Regions accept their new masters. The system itself was a blue thing, with blue white stars and planets shrouded in blue clouds and teal water and ice. They weren’t all cold moons mined for minerals, however; several of the planets were blue with the haze of ancient war toxins that had killed every combatant and had left the planets still uninhabitable by any living creature.

It was at the heart of the system that there were twin planets that could sustain life. La’n was a rocky place, with little blue green patches that grew abundant food by winding rivers full of fish and water bugs. La’n wasn’t a problem.

Tru was the problem.

Or it had been the problem. Night fell heavily on Tru, with the stars invisible through the thick clouds until nearly morning. The darkness was broken by two things. A flickering holovid held in a black gloved hand, and the juddering red light of Kylo Ren’s lightsaber.

His black helmet turned toward the other Knights where they stood a little apart from him.

Mar was there, flanked by a Knight on either side. Ephreen Aun’La, now called Reveka Ren, and Noxen, who held his long-range sniper rifle in his hands, another model that resembled a bazooka on his back. Mar glanced at Reveka and then back to Kylo, tilting her head up.

«New orders?»

Kylo Ren closed his hand and the holo disc’s illumination cut out immediately. It had been at the same time easier and more difficult to re-establish himself as the leader of the Knights than he’d thought. At first, it was simply their unity of purpose that allowed them to take on missions together. He hadn’t had to kill any of them to assume his place as he hot on the humid jungle planet where he’d killed Takhar Ren to assume the mantle of leadership, but he had fought each of them to put them into their own places. He’d fought them physically or mentally, driving them to the ground with his mastery of the Force, depending on their individual strengths. Now, more than six months after he’d left Star Killer to resume his missions for Snoke, he stood once again as the master to all the Knights. There were no more doubts and no more questions. His own loyalty had solidified once more as soon as he was away from the dead planet the Order had made their weapon. He understood the ineluctable power that was the First Order, the importance of their aim in an aimless galaxy. It made sense again; Snoke had beaten his mind until he remembered, had bent his spirit until he knew what he was doing again. Away from Star Killer, he could forget his own doubts. Without the hollowness of the planet beneath his feet, he could be Kylo Ren again and remember that Ben Solo was as dead as the nameless world Hux was master of.

«The Supreme Leader believes that as soon as we have finished with the settlement, the system will be secure. We have orders to aid in the siege of the Flesaram.» It wasn’t a system he personally knew, though he’d applied himself to learn as much as he could about the increasingly large region of space that was under First Order control.

Mar nodded, barely, and Reveka tilted her head, curious. She looked at Mar but didn’t say anything, and it was the Zabrak who responded again, «Are we being sent to break the capitol seat?»

Kylo Ren tucked the holo disc into pocket on his heavy outer robe. He was glad to see Reveka curious but unquestioning; she was constantly alert, but she knew when to wait for a cue from one of senior Knights. Mar had done well with her; he approved of her decision, as he did for most of the choices she made. Particularly now that he remembered to side with him in all things.

«We are. The Supreme Leader isn’t content with anything less than total destruction as punishment for their betrayal of the Order officials who were there. They were assassinated and dismembered, then strung up in the city forum to rouse the blood of the rebels. The infection has spread through the system. A cure, in this case, won’t be enough. Amputation is required.»

Mar nodded, and Reveka shifted on her feet, her emotions a mixed up roil that didn’t surface too far above her consciousness. Noxen spoke, «Will we be joined by the others?»

«Yes. It’s time for an example to be made.» Kylo Ren raised his chin slightly. «The First Order is nearly ready to make its grand entrance. We are the precursors. The harbingers.»

«What officer is overseeing the siege currently?» Mar asked, already shifting, turning with the entire group of them back towards their speeders. The shuttle was about five kliks away, and they moved with a single purpose. «Will there be additional support?»

It was easy to command a group that responded to your unspoken commands, even when they were wordless. Kylo Ren walked beside Mar, long strides bringing him to her side within a few steps. The smell of the burning behind them grew fainter as they walked.

«I don’t know which officer is currently in command, but I assume he or she will be relieved for someone with more of a unique approach to cut short the nonsense. There will be a multi-pronged attack on several targets in the system, with our assault the second offensive after an initial air confrontation.» Kylo clipped his lightsaber to his belt as he climbed onto his speeder. He could feel the last remnants of life leaving the settlement, the bright lights falling out of the Force. Each one was like a gut punch, but he’d learned to ignore it and move on, using any lingering pain to remind himself that these people had all been foolish, as he had been foolish in the past. They’d deserved the punishment they’d received.

Mar hummed in her helmet, and although it wasn’t audible over the speedsters, the group understood. She sent another message to Kylo directly.

«Your favorite General, then?» She asked, almost teasing, something close to humor. «He’s well suited for this kind of strategy.»

Behind his helmet, Kylo allowed himself a tight smile. He let her feel it; she’d earned that type of closeness.

«He would likely be the best choice, wouldn’t he? I’ll put in the request to the Supreme Leader. I’ll let him know it was the suggestion of the always clear-headed Sa’marha Ren,» he joked back in that strange sort of humor they shared.

Mar’s response was almost like a purr, and she smirked. «Of course, Lord Ren.»

They continued to the shuttle and abandoned their speeders. Reveka finally spoke up as they walked onto the larger shuttle.

«Will Star Killer finish this system off?» She was soft spoken, her voice slightly high pitched, even echoing in their heads. «Tru has fallen, the system is poison. Better to be rid of it, right?»

Kylo Ren walked up the ramp last, watching the other three settle into the shuttle. Even on board, they didn’t remove their helmets. Even with one another, they maintained their dark anonymity. Once they were alone, they could feel air on their bare faces.

«The Botaran system isn’t worth the attention now. Unless General Hux needs another test system for the weapon. In either case, it’s of no concern to us.»

Reveka still turned to Mar for answers, even though she recognized that Kylo was the power in their group. Mar was the only other woman, and the one who had picked her out of obscurity, encouraged her to be powerful.

She nodded and then bowed to Ren, disappearing into her small private area. She took off her helmet and lay on the cot, curling up.

Mar watched her leave and then looked over at Kylo Ren, shifting slightly.

“Do you have any orders for me, Lord Ren?” Her voice was soft but rough, harsher still out of the vocoder.

“When the other Knights arrive, I need you to bring them up to speed. Also, Reveka needs refining in her silence.” Kylo glanced over at Mar. “I trust you to take care of that.”

Mar inclined her head. “She is learning fast. I’ll correct her.” She paused for another few seconds, watching Kylo. Taking a deep breath, she glanced around the ship as the ship headed towards the major astrolane.

She shifted, and it was less of a gesture and more like a shimmer she sent over. “Is that all?”

“Clearly not. What’s on your mind, Mar?” he asked, voice quiet through the vocoder. Kylo Ren walked over to look out one of the ports. He trusted her opinions; it had been a relief to take her back into his confidence.

The Zabrak knight took a deep breath, shaking her head. “Nothing, Kylo.” She smirked behind her helmet, retreating to her rooms as well. «The General usually makes these large scale invasions pass quickly.»

The _Finalizer_ had a different feeling than other ships Kylo Ren traveled on. Maybe it was the sense of himself and what he’d been on this ship. He remembered seeing it for the first time, the shape that seemed impossible against the backdrop of stars when it should have only existed in historic holofilms. He’d been Ben Solo here, and while it hadn’t been the last time he’d used the name, he knew it was where his change had started, where Kylo Ren had begun even before the name had been a dream, before the jungle had been a dream.

He listened to the familiar sound of the three Knights who’d arrived with him falling into step with him as he walked down the shuttle ramp. He didn’t look at the lines of stormtroopers as he walked; it was enough to feel the fearful obedience that ran through them all as though they were all connected to the same current. Their identical white helmets hid it however, just the way the Knights’ helmets hid their faces and identities. There was no one on this ship who knew what Sa’marha Ren had been, or what color Noxen Ren’s eyes were.

There was one man who knew Kylo Ren’s face.

General Hux had already seen to the accommodations of the other knights, clearing a second level of officer’s suites for the dark group. He had ordered that an additional room near the rest of the group be made ready, but had also ordered the staff prepare rooms that Kylo Ren had previously occupied.

In some things, Arrik Hux was not subtle.

As soon as the shuttle landed, the general had to prevent himself from sending a message to Kylo ren immediately. He knew that whatever connection they had wouldn’t be clear, so he waited.

I’d like to request a meeting. -A. Hux

Kylo Ren glanced at his wrist comm and felt a tangle of emotions as he read over the six words. Even just the sight of the name on the message conjured up strange images in his head. He imagined Hux’s mouth full of blood and knew what it would be like to lean down and kiss him, spilling that hot metallic taste into his own mouth. He could just as easily feel the sensation of a gloved hand twisted into the back of his hair, forcing his head down until he had no choice but to put his mouth around the general’s cock but he did have the choice whether to use teeth or not.

He didn’t trust himself to answer. Knowing Mar would handle the rest of the Knights, he let himself feel for Arrik then headed to the general’s office. He didn’t bother to announce himself, through the comm or in Hux’s head. He waved his hand and the doors opened; his entrance was announcement enough.

Hux looked up as the doors opened. He didn’t think it was Ren, at first assuming that an officer had barged into his office. He frowned deeply, and then stood up. He saw it was Ren and his eyebrows shot up.

“Ren.”

“You asked for a meeting, general.” Statement, not a question. He walked over to stand in front of the sleek desk. Setting his fingertips on the edge, Kylo leaned down over the desk, the eye piece on his mask reflected Arrik back at himself.

Hux tilted his head up, almost smirking, his hands behind his back. He nodded, looking over Kylo Ren. It had been a few months since they had seen each other face to face, although they had spoken occasionally, both over the holoscreen and through their renewed mental connection.

“So I did,” he said quietly. “It has been a while.”

Kylo didn’t mind the way Hux took stock of him, the way his eyes looked over every part of him and likely made judgements and decisions. It made him curious, but not angry now.

“I was finishing my work in the Botaran system. There was a need for special handling.” Blinking slowly behind the faceplate of his helmet, Kylo sent the image of the burning cities to Hux. He let him see it all, the flash of his lightsaber, the feeling of his Knights behind him as he strode into the temple. Hux could likely smell the slight scent of burning flesh when the guards were struck down, then the low arch of the central room, where he unerringly reached in the dark to take up the… “You’ve been busy as well?”

Hux smirked, ducked his head and then sat down. He gestured at the chairs across from his desk, thinking carefully over the destruction that Kylo Ren had caused, the fire he had left in his wake.

“Something like that. We’ve had a few more run ins with the Resistance that I’ve had to maneuver around. It’s delicate,” he said, shrugging. “We have to show just enough strength to make them wary but not enough to give them proof to give the Senate.”

“I heard about the...disappearance of the Pantoran senator’s shuttle. Subtle, though I feel that the Resistance is likely trying to make the Senate believe it was not just a mysterious accident.” Kylo Ren sat down, back very straight and hands in loose fists on his knees.

“They’ll have a hard time proving it. No distress signals left that ship,” Hux said smugly, drawing his eyes over Ren’s shoulders down to his fists. “Are you tense? Don’t let me keep you from resting.”

“I have no need for rest at the moment. You wanted to meet with me. I know it must be for something important.” The black helmet tilted slightly, a strangely uncanny gesture when there were no curious features to go with it.

Hux smirked and shrugged, still looking over Ren. He didn’t have eyes to meet, so enjoying the view was better than staring into the slightly mirrored lenses.

“I just wanted a meeting. To catch up.” He shrugged again, turning to dismiss a notification on a holoscreen. “It was a friendly invitation, moreso than a demand for a report.”

“Mm. Good. You know you can’t make demands of me.” Faint amusement managed to find its way through the strange distortion of the vocoder. “Victory suits you as well as purpose does. You look good.”

Kylo Ren’s hands spread on his knees, long fingers extended for a moment to stretch before he drew them in again to his palms. As Hux had looked him over, now he was taking in every detail of the general. His details were perfection; there was no lone wrinkle to mar the sharp lines of his uniform, no stray lock of hair out of place to give a hint of a different side of the man. Kylo himself was unworried by that sort of perfection. The ragged edge of the heavy wrap around his shoulders didn’t bother him, nor did the collection of dents in his helmet. His skills continued to improve, and that was what mattered. He was the master of his Knights, he was the chosen one of the Supreme Leader. He found his purpose, and his acceptance of it, more and more every day.

But it was impossible not to appreciate the perfection of Arrik Hux. And even more impossible not to want to destroy it.

“You look well-used,” Hux responded, not entirely unkind, almost teasing. “You’ve seen more action than I have and seem all the better for it.”

“We are men of action.” Kylo smirked within his helmet. “Or at least, I am a man of action. You are a man who craves it to the point of…” He paused, touching his tongue to his top lip thoughtfully. “Sexual deviancy.”

It felt good to say it aloud, to remember Arrik’s body aloud, the curve of his back, the fire he’d touched when he thrust inside him.

Hux’s eyebrows shot straight up. He had almost forgotten the kind of man Kylo was.

“It takes more than a few burning buildings to affect me quite like that,” Hux murmured, smirking slightly. He paused for a few seconds. «How about a smoke?»

At least his smiles were hidden. «Can we smoke in here without three different alarms going off?»

Hux leaned over and turned the holoscreen back on. He disabled any fire alarms for an hour, and then shifted in his chair, pulling out a slim cigarette case. He stood, walking around the desk, passing Kylo to stand in front of the massive plastiglass panels that allowed dim starlight to shine into the office.

He opened the case, pulled out two cigarettes and held one out to Ren.

«Give ust a light?»

It gave Kylo Ren a little shock of pleasure when he remembered that the original case was now part of the lightsaber clipped to his side, that Brendol Hux’s legacy let his weapon use the cracked crystal he’d bonded with.

With a quiet hiss, the helmet lock mechanism opened and he set the heavy thing on Hux’s desk, then he pulled the glove off his right hand as he walked over to join Hux by the window. Fire. It was the easiest thing to bring to his fingertips, a child’s game, a dinner party trick, the trick that had reduced the city of Kyran to ash and charred bones. He held his hand over to Hux, little flame dancing over his fingers.

Hux reached out to take Kylo’s wrist, his fingers wrapped around bare skin, pulling the flame closer to light his cig. He took a step back, exhaled, and then offered the second to the knight.

Kylo Ren took the cigarette, snapping his fingers against the end to light it before leaning his head back to exhale smoke toward the ceiling. The fire always seemed to intrigue Hux, maybe one of the simplest pleasures he’d seen the man enjoy.

Hux smirked and then turned to look out of the windows. He smoked silently, standing shoulder to shoulder with Kylo Ren. They hadn’t been this close to each other in over a month, and being so close to someone he trusted so deeply, who knew him so intimately. He didn’t want to be the first to break the silence.

The smoke was acrid, the cheap ration cigarettes that were same as those the other men had. The sweet ones must have just been at his mansion on Arkanis, where Hux was a sort of prince, Kylo reflected. But he relished the sharp tang of it, the stinging in his lungs.

“Did you volunteer for this mission or were you sent?” he asked quietly, blowing smoke in a thin stream that plumed against the window.

Hux smirked. “Since I’m the one who assigns the missions, I suppose I volunteered,” he said, taking another drag off his cigarette. “There are some benefits to being in charge.”

He couldn’t stand there and not touch him, Kylo decided, though they were not the type of men who embraced. They were not the type of men who held one another. The Knight shifted his cigarette to his other hand, then put his hand on the back of Hux’s neck. He squeezed slightly, a reminder of his strength.

“Your name came up in my casual discussions as well. One of several, of course,” he said mildly, taking another drag of his cigarette.

Hux tilted his head up, not shrugging off Ren’s hand. It was so casual, so intimate, and he didn’t flinch away from Ren’s hand. He took a deep breath and made a noise in the back of his throat. “Did it?” He asked, trying to sound relaxed. “How so?”

Kylo’s thumb dug into the tender skin beside the tight muscles running up the back of Hux’s neck. So tight, his entire body. Muscles, voice, mouth.

“The other names that were coming up wouldn’t have suited my purposes. Mapes, Sk’aran, Finda. With their common ideas and their thrice-used techniques. Their attacks are so staid schoolchildren could recite the maneuvers by rote.” Kylo squeezed his neck again, then leaned closer, biting just under his jaw. He tasted like soap and loathing.

Hux smirked, closing his eyes, taking a final drag on the cig in between his fingers. He nodded, shifted closer to put a hand on Kylo’s side. It was no small encouragement.

“You’re shameless, Kylo,” he said, smirking. The man was a flatterer, but Hux wouldn’t argue. Kylo also happened to be right.

“So don’t make me regret my decision,” Kylo said against Hux’s skin, mouth on his throat though his eyes were still looking out at the vast openness the window displayed.

Hux hummed, spread his hand on Kylo’s side as the man kissed him. He took a deep breath, tilting his head up.

Dipping his tongue beneath the stiff collar, Kylo could almost taste the other man’s pulse. Just as quickly, he straightened up again and watched out the window. He left a little gap between them, a little space between the lines of their shoulders.

Taking a deep breath, Hux dropped his hand. He enjoyed this. Their strange closeness was not harsh, not unkind, but neither was it tender.

“You have your choice of rooms,” he explained, finishing his cig and turning to put it out on the ashtray on the table. “By your knights in the lower officer’s quarters, or in the executive’s suite.”

“Which is my old berth? I’d prefer to have it back, if the changes I made to it are still intact.” Kylo found himself holding his breath while he waited for Hux’s answer. His own cig was burning down into a cylindrical ash, forgotten in favor of this man, this view, this revelation.

“It’s been prepared,” Hux said, walking back to him, still at his shoulder. “All your knights have restricted access throughout the ship, although they all have a high clearance. Coming onto the bridge, taking out an individual ship, long range communications-” he gestured. “-all require an officer’s approval.”

Kylo Ren watched him, tilting his head slightly. He was rather certain that the restrictions were in place for him, rather than because there was any concern about what his Knights would do. It was a nuisance, and slightly embarrassing. A man of his standing should have no need of officer approval in any aspect of his life, personal or professional.

“When will those restrictions be lifted?” he asked lightly, looking back out again. Far away stars blinked and disappeared, either falling out of sight or dying. He didn’t care which, once they were no longer in his line of vision.

Hux felt it, that annoyance, and he shrugged. “You have no such restrictions,” he explained. “Just the Knights. They will have almost no use for those amenities anyway, and missives from Snoke are always in the holonet room. They have access to that.”

“Of course.” His voice even in his own ears was too cold and focused. He couldn’t stop thinking of his room now, the thick black coverlet on the huge bed, the area he’d cleared for training with his lightsaber. Most importantly, he wanted to know if the box was still in its place on the pedestal he’d had made for the center of the main room. It was the most important by far. He’d been waiting to get back onto the _Finalizer_ for more than one reason.

Arrik shifted a little, hearing Kylo over their connection and frowning slightly. It was like a hum, nothing that he could really understand or decipher, but he tried, stayed quiet as he reached towards that strange vibration. It was important, and he tried to pin it down.

“Your rooms have been left untouched,” he finally said, turning again to look at Kylo’s profile. “I have a few more hours here. You can stay or go as you please.”

“Why don’t you come back with me. Show me.” Kylo’s voice was so quiet it was almost just in their heads. His hand moved by his side, almost as though he was reaching for a cup. Or a hand. But the gesture was abortive; he dropped his hand a moment later.

“I still have work to do, Ren,” Hux responded, hands fixed behind his back. He waited a few seconds, just letting himself be near Kylo, close as he hadn’t been in months. Taking a deep breath, Hux smirked as he looked out the large window. He shook his head and glanced over at Ren, smiling, just barely. The general reached over and put the side of his hand on Ren’s hip, eyes falling down slightly.

“It’s good to have you back on board,” Hux said quietly, looking back out at the expanse of stars. He was completely open, no mental walls in between him and Kylo.

It was more of a welcome than he’d expected somehow. Small touches and an even smaller smile were loud in his head where Hux brushed against his mind, invited. His gracious thank you.

“You could at least offer me a drink,” Kylo said, letting himself look over to watch Hux. He could read the movement of his eyelashes, the little tightening at the corners of his mouth.

«Would you like a drink?» Hux asked, smirking slightly, going directly to his small cabinet where he stashed glasses and good liquor. He pulled out short glasses and poured two stiff drinks, turning back to Kylo.

«Whisp-barreled, aged over smoke. One of my favorites.»

«No one’s ever accused you of having bad taste,» the Knight responded, holding his hand out as Hux walked closer. Using the Force, he pulled the glass out of the general’s hand and floated it over to wrap his fingers around it. «At least no one in my hearing who survived the night.»

He raised the glass in an odd salute, then took a small sip. The drink was smoky, and reminded him strangely of the garden on Arkanis. He thought of cig smoke in his mouth, the evening damp of the flagstones through the knees of his trousers.

Hux smirked and drank as well, savoring it. «It’s herbal on the aftertaste,» he said, walking back over to Kylo, standing shoulder to shoulder with him again. «I can show you to your rooms in a few hours.»

“So should I stay while you complete your reports or whatever...other important work you have?” he asked, letting himself taste the whiskey through Hux’s senses. Hux knew it better, caught the notes with the tongue of practice.

Hux made a noise, walking the length of the office again to sit at his desk. He took a deep breath and opened Tower again, looking through the messages.

“It looks like your Knights have all been settled,” Hux remarked, taking a sip of his scotch. He was slowly relaxing now that Kylo Ren had finally made it aboard his ship. It was strange to think that having the man near was less stressful than having him away. Kylo Ren was here. Hux couldn’t quite think beyond that, Ren here, with him, the mission ahead.

“We don’t require much. There isn’t much to settling in.” Kylo Ren turned back to the window, holding the glass low as he looked out the window. Hux’s presence was deceptively calming; he felt that he could let his shoulders relax while in the general’s presence, which he knew was foolish. The general was as dangerous as a venomous snake in one’s bed. He was sharp as broken glass ground into one’s drink.

Hux made a noise in the back of his throat, frowning as he received more messages from the Flesaram system. The siege was already underway, and the _Finalizer_ was bringing the fight to a head throughout the system. They had two more Destroyers at the ready; Barril’s _Vindication_ and the other Star Destroyer in the Northeastern quadrant, Colonel Shara Elmisand of the _Faultless_.

Elmisand’s short-range TIE fleet had been depleted over forty per cent during the siege, a far higher loss than Hux had planned for, and there would be no reinforcements coming. Hux pressed his mouth and sighed. Another headache. He would have to make do.

“What have you been told of the Flesaram system?” Hux asked, looking over at Ren again.

“Only that there is a multi-pronged attack planned, with some sieges already in place. I know that there has been some attempt at ground attacks on several planets in the system with varying levels of success.” Kylo paused and took another sip of his drink, then walked away from the wide window to set the glass down on a small table. He was no longer the type of let himself relax too much with the help of alcohol.

He walked over to Hux’s desk, reaching past him to bring the reports and maps up onto the larger transparent screen before them. Gesturing toward the areas that were highlighted very obviously in red, he looked toward the general.

“But this shows that the most frequent level of success has been nonexistent,” he said, smirking.

Hux snorted, rolling his eyes.

“That’s not entirely correct,” Hux pointed out. “Short land battles and naval engagements have given us a broader idea of the kind of tactics we’ll need. These are advanced sentients. They have been conducting warfare amongst themselves for thousands of years. It’s a marvel of isolation and idiocy that kept them from pursuing other game. Newcomers like us aren’t entirely sure of their strategy. We do know how to learn,” he said, leaning forwards, lacing his hands together and resting his chin on them.

“The First Order can’t have been the first to cast an eye on them. Those mineral deposits must be very attractive to other systems. Considering the history of war on these planets, they look largely untouched.” Kylo looked over the charts, swiping lazily to move through them and read the notes he was rather sure had been added by the general.

He knew he could split his group into two easily. Sa’marha would take command of the other attack squad, and he trusted her with it. He wanted the Knights to put boots down where they would not necessarily be the best tactically (they would enhance any offensive), but where they would be psychologically devastating, where their decisive, terrifying victory would affect the larger war at hand.

Hux shrugged again. “They’re remote planets, and far enough from the main hyperlane to stay off most radars. They’re warlike and defensive, and I doubt that there are many groups in the nearby systems that can match the three populated planets of Flesaram.”

“Which one puts on the fight in the air? Do they have large ships, or is this all pissy little ships just chipping away at the Order?” Kylo Ren asked, looking down at Hux as he spoke. He leaned his arm against the headrest comfortably.

Hux made a noise, pointing at one of the planets on the holoscreen. It expanded to fill the space.

“Vaxa, the closest to the sun, they’ve got five large ships patrolling their system, and a large fleet of starfighter ships, and an advanced planetary defense system.” He gestured and another planet came into view. “Marai, over here, is their largest threat. They possess an extremely large fleet of starfighter ships, and they pride themselves on their flying. Aralat is sort of a secondary planet compared to the other two. Aralan workers are prized throughout the three , and they’re often in control of the mines. They’re the economic force inside of Flesaram.”

He glanced over at Ren, eyebrows up. “They will probably ally themselves against the Order.”

“I would imagine they see you as the greatest threat. Of course they’ll work together. The question is where to hit first. My Knights and I can make two offensives concurrently for maximum effect. So I guess your option here is choose two that you really want to shock. It’s not the body count with us, it’s the impression we leave behind.” Kylo Ren turned his wrist and gripped the back of Hux’s neck with fingers that were strong but choosing not to be.

Hux didn’t flinch or move away as Ren’s hand rested against him. He nodded, not saying anything for a minute as he turned over the different possibilities.

“I will have to think about this carefully,” he said, finally. “We have another day until we reach that system. We have three destroyers, a limited number of TIEs, an even more restricted amount of ground troops and a team comprised of witches and men who still use swords in battle.”

Kylo shook his head and squeezed Hux’s neck slightly, rolling his eyes even though the man couldn’t see him.

“I don’t think you’re correctly analyzing your strengths, general. You’re separating it into witches and men with swords, and you’re completely leaving out those of us who are both. One would think you’d be more accurate when looking at your resources.” He smirked and looked down at him

Hux snorted, glancing up at Ren again. “Regardless,” he said, looking back to the holoscreen and gesturing, returning all the images down to the flat surface of his pad. “This requires more thought than I have given it.”

“Time is of the essence, so you don’t have a lot of time to work your way through those thoughts.” Kylo shrugged, giving Hux’s neck a final tight squeeze before lowering his hand. “Get us on the ground first. Send one of the Destroyers to the area you think will be most challenging in terms of air launches from the planet. Don’t send all your ships in at once. This fight is more than destruction.”

He leaned down and set his teeth in Hux’s ear, feeling the cartilage’s strange texture as bit down harder to see how much the man could take. When the general didn’t flinch, the Knight smiled slightly and murmured against his ear.

“If you don’t make this a battle your name remains attached to in victory, then you might as well resign yourself to always being...the backup,” he whispered, voice barely moving air as it brushed past Hux’s ear canal.

Hux frowned, but remained otherwise still. He set his jaw, his hand frozen in place above the screen as Ren drew closer.

“I am called when the Order needs an assurance of victory,” Hux reminded Ren, speaking softly. “I am not your average call for reinforcements.”

“Is that what it is this time?” Kylo didn’t pull back, kept his mouth against Arrik’s skin. He remembered their longing for power, for combined domination, and he felt it from Hux. That hadn’t lessened, and the remaining thread between them resonated with it when the general looked over the charts and maps and contemplated victory. “It sounds like you were just called in to clean up. You aren’t the highest commanding officer on this campaign, are you? It’s not your campaign.” He paused and let the Force cut off Hux’s air for just a second. “But it should be.”

Hux didn’t move, completely still, his shoulders hunched. He tilted his head up and looked over at Ren, mouth parting slightly.

“You are a menace, Kylo Ren,” he murmured, annoyed and amused.

“For putting your thoughts into words? Don’t think so loudly at me then.” Kylo wanted to kiss him, wanted to kiss blood off his mouth. “Just tell me you don’t want to hear what I have to say, and I’ll stop.”

Shaking his head, Hux gestured and moved the screens, setting the maps on the wall. “Thinking loudly is subjective,” he said, arguing for the sake of it. They both knew the breadth of their ambition. “Perhaps I just have strong opinions.”

“That’s no surprise to me.” Kylo let his eyes follow the movement of the maps but he didn’t shift away from Hux. “But you still haven’t told me to shut up, so I imagine you want to hear more.”

Hux sighed.

“Ren, would you like to plan an invasion or go to bed?” He asked, putting his pad down and turning to look over at at Knight. “You seem eager to fight and fuck.”

“I could fuck you any time,” Kylo said, smirking to himself as he stepped back. “And you need time to complete your own plan. I’ve told you what you should keep in mind, for yourself and for my Knights. We’ll reconvene tomorrow, general. Thanks for the drink.”

“If I have questions, I will speak with you,” Hux said, watching Kylo. He smiled slightly and inclined his head. “I am going to be planning for next few days, but I’ll be in my quarters soon. We can...convene then, towards the second purpose, if you’re not too tired.”

“You’ll find me indefatigable.” Kylo Ren’s smile was more his former self than he’d intended, but the use of the ridiculous word made keeping a straight face too difficult. “I’ll be by later.”

Gripping the back of the chair, he pulled it back far enough to put Hux off balance, feeling the tension in the other man’s body. He leaned over to kiss him ungently, then righted the chair.

Hux made a noise in the back of his throat, baring his teeth. He shifted and leaned forward, following Ren as he pulled away. “Get out of my office before I tear that robe off you.”

Kylo’s laughter was low and deep and it was hard to tell if it was actually a sound the Knight was making aloud or if it was just throbbing in Hux’s head. He walked past the general’s desk, flicking his fingers and sending one of the smaller datasticks from its neat position in one of the niches to the floor.

“Good luck with your planning, general. Don’t stay up too late.” He snatched up his helmet as he walked to the door. “Don’t want your performance to suffer.”

The officer said nothing as Ren left, knowing that if Kylo didn’t get the last word in, the conversation hadn’t ended.

Even through the filters in his helmet, Kylo Ren could smell the smoke from the two already conquered planets that he and his Knights brought with him to the central third. He tapped the comm button at the bottom lip of his helmet.

“General, we’re approaching the Waino compound. Do you have any final information for us?” His other hand tightened on the hilt of his lightsaber, feeling the Knights behind him as they all readied for battle in their own ways. The hum of Sa’marha’s meditation, Noxen’s chant as he built up the power he would call on for his focus.

Above him, in the space of the Flesaram System, Arrik Hux was waging a war. He grit his teeth, watching the destroyers take massive damage as the fleets from Vaxa and Marai proved more maneuverable and well-commanded than originally assumed. The Aralan mining planet had better production facilities than First Order intelligence had given.

At the incoming message, Hux turned from his battle station and put Ren through. He frowned at an incoming message from Elmisand and then looked back to Ren.

“Make it fast,” Hux ordered, staring at the small screen, frowning. “Nail the insurgents to the kriffing surface and get up here. I need everyone back.” He wasn’t just talking about the Knights, there were legions on the surface of Vaxa. As soon as the planetary defense system fell it would open up room for the _Vindication_ to destroy the planet. Right now, the large Marian patrol ships were making the fight difficult.

Kylo Ren unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, shifting it in his hand to find the exact way he liked to hold it. He could feel the strange power of the crystal inside, the cracked crystal that had made some other dead Jedi’s lightsaber blade deep blue. It sang to him in a scratchy, hoarse voice that reverberated through his own vocal cords.

“I only have one more question for you, general.” He paused, feeling the rise in power behind him as his Knights let themselves fall into the Force to the best of their abilities. “How many survivors do you need?”

“None,” Hux said, feeling something dark and cavernous inside of him. It might have been Kylo, it might have been the fact that it was becoming apparent that they were outnumbered. Whatever it was, he didn’t care to question it. “Cut them all down.”

Kylo Ren smiled and closed his eyes, unseen within his helmet. If Hux wanted a barren, wasted planet, he would have been happy to give it to him. He gestured with his left hand, silently ordering his Knights forward. The whisper in their thoughts was sibilant; he felt it ripple through the Force. He let Hux feel it.

«No survivors.»

Arrik Hux bared his teeth a he turned away from Ren’s image. He looked back at the arena that he faced and he repeated the words back to Kylo. «None.»

The lightsaber came to life in Kylo Ren’s hand as he strode forward. Already there were shots from the holdout ahead of them. He deflected two with one sweep of the saber, then glanced back to Mar, nodding once before they were the battle.

His lightsaber cut through bodies as he advanced, and while visually it was a clean movement, he could feel the split second difference between flesh and bone. The Force moved through his arm, up the curve of his back, in each time he spun to meet another attack. He could feel his Knights spreading out through the settlement like a virus.

No survivors.

He was never sure what caused the fires that were always burning after fights like this, but the singed smell was all around them again. He leaned his head back as he turned the lightsaber off.

«Did you feel that, Arrik?» He turned his head to a scream at his right. The body fell heavily a second later, the rebel’s neck snapped by the Force. Kylo lowered his hand as he looked around again.

Above him, Hux shivered.

Next to Ren, Mar killed a man silently. She was breathing hard, dark green smoke leaking out of the seam in between her gloves and sleeves. She made a noise that wasn’t quite human, turned away from ren and jumped forward, attacking another Vashi soldier. She turned her head, wolf-like, predatory, and stared at Kylo before facing the oncoming Vashi, her elecrostaff a living thing in her hand as she attacked again.

Kylo walked through the chaos, absorbing it and feeling himself growing stronger in the currents of the dark side. Something caught at the hem of his tabard, and he slashed with his lightsaber without even looking down. There weren’t many of them left in the settlement; he identified the core group of soldiers guarding their leaders. Twins, he knew from Hux’s unfailingly detailed reports. The perfectly divided leadership, a government set up on the fact that their leaders had shared a womb.

Behind the mask, Kylo Ren gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, drawing up the pain from the few wounds on his body, from his sleepless night before the battle. He spun the lightsaber in front of him, bracing one foot back as he deflected a blaster bolt back at one of the guards, blackening the front of his helmet and killing him instantly. When one of the other guards stepped back in instinctive fear, it only enraged the Knight further.

Deflecting another bolt into a guard’s chest, he turned with his momentum and raised his left hand. With the Force, he grabbed the hesitant soldier by the throat and dragged him across the churned, muddy ground. He could feel the man’s terror and it was exactly what he wanted. He let the man take one of the bolts meant for him, even as he heard the shouts.

“Don’t hit Yanano! Hold your fire!”

He threw the man’s body back at his team, the dead weight knocking one of them down. Within seconds, Kylo Ren had advanced and killed two more guards. One man frantically reached for his lower half for a few seconds as the Knight walked past him.

“Which of you are the ministers?” he asked, voice low and growling through his vocoder.

Behind Ren the rest of his Knights were cleaning up. Mar’s staff snapped a man’s neck, Noxen took out three soldiers within a second. Zâyral came up, standing just behind Ren as the uniformed Vashi soldiers made a few quickly-cut down attempts to escape, shorn in two by the Knight’s wicked blade.

From a small door three officers in navy uniforms with bright white and blue piping came out, hands up in obvious surrender.

Below them, the massive generators hummed. The rooms were warmed from the energy of the machine that kept the planetary shields operational.

Kylo Ren didn’t have to say anything or even gesture; he gave the order for his Knights to step forward.

“Where are your ministers?” he asked the three officers, lightsaber still ignited in his hand. “The twins.”

One of the officers swallowed, tilting his head up as his throat was threatened by Zâyral’s bloody blade. “Downstairs.”

Kylo Ren nodded to Zâyral, then walked past the officers toward the stairs. The sound of the execution behind him didn’t even make him turn his head as he led the rest of the Knights to the lower level.

Mar was just behind him, not speaking to him, following his lead.

The rooms they passed first were empty; it was easy to feel that out as they walked. In one small room, there were several small lives, unimportant lives. Kylo imagined they were domestics, not even soldiers involved in the fight. No survivors. He gestured for Noxen to shoot them as he moved forward.

The lights flickered above them and Kylo Ren’s helmet tipped up slightly. There were more soldiers; he could feel them coming. They were no concern, and only served to prove they were going in the right direction.

«Stay with me, Arrik. Feel it all.» The Knight stepped forward to meet the rush, lightsaber cutting through limbs with ease as Kylo turned like a dancer in the soldiers’ midst. He felt the deaths in the Force, the violent starburst then blackness of lives ended.

On board the _Finalizer_ , the general turned away from his battle station, taking his hands off the screens that sent orders out to the three Star Destroyers and thousands of starfighters. He shivered, seeing Ren in the back of his head, hearing him. «Yes.»

Kylo stepped over the final body, making his way toward the safe room at the end of the hallway. He smirked to himself when he saw the lockbox next to the door. It was likely full of complicated codes and safeguards against the box’s destruction, multiple levels of security and several layers of heavy durasteel for the doors.

The plasma blade spat and juddered in his hands as Kylo Ren pushed it through the door. The metal melted away from the blade and he pushed with a focused concentration of the Force to keep the blade moving through the layers. Pulling back, he kicked in what remained of the door and ducked his head to enter the safe room.

“You are the ministers, I assume. We’ve been anxious to meet you,” he said in his emotionless modified voice.

The two stood up at the same time. They were nearly identical, even their heights matched. They stood shoulder to shoulder, in front of the giant control panel.

“We are.”

They made no move forward, knowing that this is where they died. Arrik Hux gasped, feeling it as Kylo did, that knowledge, that power, fear and hatred, defeat and victory.

“Do it,” the general said aloud, opening his eyes, refocusing on the battle that played out in front of him, not the one so many miles beneath him. “Kill them and come here.”

There were no grand speeches to make on either side. This was a meeting of powers, and one power would always consume the other. Kylo Ren felt his power growing, felt it hunger for what it would destroy. All the soldiers above, the scorched killing wounds through their uniforms, they were fodder for this war machine, but these two, they were the heart of it. They were the victory on this planet.

Behind him, the Knights of Ren arranged themselves, comfortable and easy now. The blood lust sang through them all where they were connected through the dark side of the Force; Kylo felt that he could run his hand through the darkness, watch his fingers part it.

And above him like an unholy guiding star, he felt Hux’s need. Stepping forward without preamble, Kylo Ren raised his lightsaber and killed both ministers in a single stroke. Even in death, the twins’ expressions were identical, he noted as he turned away from their bodies to walk out of the room.

«It is done. We’re returning to the _Finalizer_. Have your stormtroopers clean up the rest.»

They were met with no opposition on their way out.

Hux gave the orders, made sure that the _Legacy_ had a clear path, sent a larger escort to make sure that they got onto the Star Destroyer quickly.

That done, the General turned back to his own field. Barril’s _Vindication_ was failing in his part of the system. Even Elmisand, with her depleted fleet was faring better. He diverted Sun’s squadron of Intervention TIE’s to help, and felt no small thrill when the ticks of Sun’s kill count racked up fast and steady.

Leaving the rest of his Knights to wait for him, Kylo Ren walked onto the bridge a few minutes after the _Legacy_ had returned to the _Finalizer_.

“General,” he said as he came up behind him, looking over the bank of control panels Hux was currently overseeing.

“Knight,” Hux growled, filing through all the information as it came to him, all different forms, from all different planes of the battle. Vaxa’s systems were down and he had sent Barril to take care of the remains of the planet. At least he could bomb a rock now that it was made defenseless.

Hux set his jaw and looked over at Ren. He spoke quietly, “I’m not too proud to say that this isn’t the kind of victory I wanted.”

Kylo raised his eyebrows, though his helmet didn’t betray any of his expression. He could feel Hux’s disappointment and he looked over the maps before them to take in how the campaign was going.

«We’re scattered. We’re not moving as together. These planets know each other, know how to fight together. An entire system.»

Nodding without looking away from the monitors, Kylo Ren took in the details that mattered now. The far wing of TIEs too far out from their larger support ships, the casualty numbers, the Star Destroyer over by one of the planets was reacting too slowly to the rebel fighters attacking it.

«Do you have absolute control? Who’s in charge of...this?»

«I am, but even I can’t give commands to fifty thousand ships at once,» Hux snapped, turning and reassigning a small fleet to a weaker area. He looked at the scope again and cursed, pulling the comm close.

“Colonel Elmisand protect our flank! Too many enemy starfighters are coming through!”

Kylo Ren’s eyes jumped from one monitor to the other, mind rushing ahead all at once.

“You can’t watch it all. But I can.” He spoke with less confidence than he wanted to have, but it wasn’t a skill he’d ever tried before. But reaching out with the Force, he could feel the discordant movements of the fleets, the way they were at odds with the flow of the battles. He could feel all the lives, the planets, the destruction. He opened his eyes and blinked, not remembering when he’d closed them.

Hux growled, looking over at Ren. Their connection wasn’t so strong that he could feel what Ren was doing, but he knew that he was attempting...something. He made a noise in the back of his throat, still commanding from his post.

“Whatever you’re doing isn’t working, Ren.”

Kylo huffed with annoyance and looked over at Hux; the other man’s sharp, strained expression was no surprise.

“I haven’t done anything yet. I can’t just do it here with all of this going on around me. It’s loud and there are too many displays.” He shook his head. “If you’re going to trust me and rely on me, then you can’t have any of these...maps and statistics and comms. They’ll only be distractions.” He thought back to the texts he’d read, how imprecise they’d been when talking about battle meditation. He’d found it mentioned in things his uncle had, but even more in Sith documents, though the dark lords weren’t any more detailed when discussing the skill.

All he knew was that he could feel them all in the Force, every ship, every maneuver. His knowledge of his own ships and of the TIEs he’d flown gave him even more insight, but he also was aware of his deficiencies as a commander. He didn’t do large scale strategy; he never had.

But he also had what equated to a Force bond with a man who did.

Hux sent another order to Elmisand and then looked over at Kylo again. He set his jaw again, glaring at the starfighters before him.

“What do you need?”

“Silence. Darkness. Your complete faith.” Kylo tilted his head; the word ‘faith’ maybe sounded strangest through the vocoder. It was like a word that shouldn’t have had his voice at all.

Swallowing, Hux nodded, pausing his direction and transferring individual control to the ship paramount. He grabbed Ren’s elbow to turn him around and then dropped it. He didn’t need to tell Kylo to follow him, and the two of them stalked down the bridge aisle. Hux moved without looking to the side. Getting into the elevator, Hux set them to a level below the bridge.

“There’s a large meeting room on this level,” he said, stepping out. They walked down the hall and Hux scanned a cylinder, going into a large, deserted meeting room that looked out on the field of battle space. The large table was a half-moon shape, facing the windows, obviously meant for when holoscreens were used.

Hux walked around, gesturing at the window. “This enough?”

Kylo gestured and the lights in the room dropped, leaving them standing in darkness with just the large windows out on the stars and their personal war. He had no idea, because he wasn’t exactly sure when he was doing, or even if this was something that could work. He’d need to let his defenses down completely to let Hux feel the scope of the battle, and the general would have to reciprocate, letting everything flow back through Kylo Ren to control.

“It should suffice. Lock that door and give orders that you are not to be disturbed.” He paused and licked his lips before reaching up to unlock his helmet and pull it off. “And that the bridges are only to observe and accept. That includes the bridge crews of the other Star Destroyers.”

“How exactly am I supposed to do that?” Hux said quietly, pulling out a small palm-sized comm from his wrist. He shook his head as he did as Ren asked, going back to lean against the flat end of the table. “Observe and accept. How am I supposed to translate that into something the officers in my fleet understand?”

“They won’t need to understand,” Kylo said quietly, dropping his helmet onto the table before walking over to the window. “All they need to do is obey.” He inhaled as he looked out on the battle, the bursts of weapons and death, the trails of the TIEs, the seemingly peaceful planets below. He thought of the lives he’d already taken for this campaign. He thought of his power channeled through the man behind him, filtered through Hux and fed back into him before he used it to control them all.

He had no idea if he could do this. He knew he had the raw potential, but for all he knew, this would burn the both of them up in the attempt.

The Knight turned and held his hand out to Hux as if inviting him to dance. “Do you trust me?”

Hux took a deep breath and looked down, sending the message to his colonels, lieutenants, squad leaders and hangar captains. It was a massive instruction, and despite the necessity it made the General’s hands shake for just a second.

He nodded once, taking Ren’s hand.

«Show me what to do.»


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> t/w: canon-appropriate space violence. abuse of authority.

Kylo Ren felt Hux’s hand in his and immediately tightened his fingers around the other man’s as though filled with a sudden urge to break them. It wasn’t unusual; there was always something in him that wanted to hurt Hux, something that he managed to shove down most of the time.

He looked back out into space, letting himself look with just his eyes for a minute. How small the starfighters were, how pitiful against the vast blackness that swallowed everything else. It was ridiculous to think there were power in the light when it was compared against all of this. There were stars going supernova everywhere in the black void of space, and then there was nothingness again. The darkness was absolute, a beginning and an end.

Then he let himself see with more, closing his eyes and letting the enormity of it press in on him without giving into the Force as it moved through and around him. There was a hum by his side as the cracked crystal in his lightsaber responded to the pressure he was inviting. Nodding, Kylo looked over to Hux again.

“What we’re going to do is a Sith battle technique...that I have honestly never tried before. It enables a Force user to control whole fleets, imposing his or her will over pilots and commanders to influence what they do, to move all attacks and defenses together. The way I use my lightsaber when you shoot at me, moving with the currents of the Force, it’s sort of making everyone do that to fit in with a larger battle plan.” He paused. “Here’s the thing. I’ve got the strength for it, not for a long battle, but I’d think long enough. But I’m not a tactician.”

Hux pushed down anger after he heard the words ‘never tried before’. He resisted the urge to pull away from Ren and go back up to his battle station. Taking another deep breath, he nodded.

“You lead.” His voice was quiet, and he glanced out at the battle space. “Quickly.”

Without saying anything, Kylo knelt down and pulled Hux down with him. He still smelled of the battle he’d just finished, like sweat and churned earth, blood and burning cloth and wood. There was a new smell to anticipate, the ozone smell he associated with space.

“You have to let me in completely,” he instructed in a low, rushed voice, “And I’ll do the same. Ignore the small things; childhood memories or plans for the future. For now, all that exists is the battle. I’ll let you see everything, but it’s not going to be like the monitors, feeding you numbers and locations. You’re going to feel it, and you have to give it back to me.” Aloud, it sounded even more ridiculous. No Sith or Jedi had ever performed battle meditation like this. Again, Kylo Ren wondered if this would be how he died, not on the ground against a physical opponent, but here in this dark, chill room with his mind burned out by the Force.

How many times was he going to flirt with death while kneeling across from the general in a cold room, trying things he didn’t know how to do?

Hux swallowed, shifting, getting closer to Ren. Their knees were touching, hands clasped together. He nodded.

“If you show the way, I can do it. I trust you.”

The general took a deep breath and closed his eyes, feeling along their connection. He let Ren in, trying to concentrate on just Ren in front of him, trying to ignore the annoyances and concerns of the battle. All that mattered was Kylo Ren in front of him, their connection on which he stood.

Kylo watched Hux for a moment before closing his eyes, taking the opportunity to really look at him. This campaign had darkened the skin under his eyes and made his cheekbones more prominent in his naturally slim face. The control and tension in his jaw was absolute and Kylo Ren again thought of how strange it was to tie his own fate to this man.

Exhaling slowly, he closed his eyes and let the ship fall away from him. There was nothing else but Arrik for a long moment; he felt the blood pulsing through the veins in his palms, then his mind opened up before him. It was golden and grand and dark and small all at once, with power and memories tugging him in both directions. The essence of Arrik burned like fire without smoke, pure and devastating.

Opening his own mind was more difficult; he was still a creature riddled with self-doubt and neverending questions, and while the dark was the ultimate answer (he knew it, he had to know it, everything else had been ripped away, hadn’t it?), the light’s temptation and offer of answers was always there. He opened it up to Arrik, and Ben Solo was laid bare for him as he’d never offered to the Supreme Leader.

Arrik slipped into the power that Ben held. It wasn’t as if he was ignoring the distractions around him; it was simply that there was nothing else. There was just Ben and Arrik and the force. He felt as if they were nothing without each other.

It didn’t sting as much as he thought it would, and maybe he’d feel different later.

«Show me, Ben,» Arrik murmured, didn’t have to speak to the man across him, just knew, just sort of thought. «Show us.»

His eyes moved quickly beneath his closed lids as Ben reached out for Hux, then let himself fall back into the Force. The battle was around them, containable if they only stretched out their hands. There were lives within ships, small bright lights in clusters that moved and shifted with the fight. The flow of the Force surrounded them, and Ben knew that Arrik couldn’t feel it the way he could.

Their hands still felt clasped together, though their bodies were lightyears away. Moving their arms together, Ben swept a series of TIEs into a tighter formation, bringing them in line with one of the currents and setting them on a new course along the side of the enemy’s flank.

«See it all. Show me where they go.»

Arrik leaned in, and he pushed through Ben, found the information, found the movements of each ship and fighter in his mind. He made a soft noise, finding more, searching out the other destroyers, the other fleets. It was everything.

This was the kind of power that Arrik Hux would tear the universe apart to have.

He nodded and another fleet of starfighters broke off, ducking around a larger group of Marai-made _Kyzist_ ships.

Out in space, a squad leader knew to turn. He directed his TIE fleet around and got behind the the _Kyzist_ -class fighters, taking them out from behind in a series of minute maneuvers.

Vaxa was vulnerable, Hux saw the breaks the defenses and showed Barril how to exploit them. He touched the controls, maneuvered the Destroyer. Two moons around Vaxa blew up, and slowly the Star Destroyer made its way closer to the martial seat of the system.

Arrik turned his head and another fleet of starfighters maneuvered around a Marian officer’s commandship. The large vessel was beat back, it’s smaller starfighters picked off cleanly, destroyed by TIE attacks and Elmisand’s ion-cannons. It was only a matter time until the _Faultless_ had a clear shot and destroyed the bridge, taking down a large section of the opponent’s foothold on the western corridor.

The force didn’t extend to only the First Order fleet.

Recently promoted Captain Jahnavi Bant released two squadrons of TIE fighters she had been holding in reserve and sent them to the far side of the arena. Arrik had seen a large Vashi fighter moving towards the fleet, undetected. It was met with resistance, and Bant, although unsure of why she had ordered that, was quite pleased with the outcome.

Ben’s back was still as straight as it had been when they had begun, but the strain was beginning to tell on his mind. It was a lot of power to use, to filter through another sentient’s mind without letting it burn Arrik out completely.

He broadened his reach to include the planets themselves. There were reinforcements coming; he knew at the same time Arrik did that the hangars needed to be destroyed.

Arrik sat up a little, shifting again.

Deployments. He sent them out, he played the battlefield quickly. He reacted to everything. Individual fighters shot faster, leaders led their squadrons with more surety, the officers on board all three destroyers turned and knew the ambush was happening.

The last wave.

Arrik leaned forward, his forehead pressing against Ben’s chest, although he had no way of knowing that, focusing on the millions of lives and fighters he held in his hands. Ben felt himself completely in the Force, protecting the general from the energy he was exerting.

He grit his teeth, breathing through them, sending out new thoughts, sending orders to every officer, turning the Star Destroyers gently, shifting them and their guns into position. The small Vashi ships and larger _Kyzist_ ships turned into an attack that they were entirely unprepared for, almost as if their eyes had been turned, as if they were meant to ignore the signs of the First Order regroup and attack.

He was breathing hard, his heartbeat rising higher than any human’s should go. He shifted again and the First Order moved as he commanded, the fighters and fleets turned in tandem, in perfect sync, orders sent out with gentle suggestions and turns. It was individual and exceptional, it was the entire fleet and every officer, bent to Arrik Hux’s will.

Arrik moved again, turning his head, swallowing. He didn’t know what kind of time had passed, didn’t know how he commanded the entire fleet, how long it took. He just turned and pushed the ships, put the _Faultless_ into position, positioned the _Vindication_ properly into the fight. It was delicate and rough at the same time, utter control of every part and every person.

Ben’s hands tightened on Arrik’s, losing control of the whole situation as his strength left him. There was only so much he could do, exhausted from the ground battle and with no training in this skill. His grip on the edges of the field was weakening and their shared vision was fuzzier. He tried to focus on the hot zones that still needed attention.

«A final command, Arrik. We can’t maintain this connection much longer.»

Arrik made a noise, shifting again. He turned the _Vindication_ , a few of the TIE squadrons from the _Faultless_ and send quick commands to his own fleet before it suddenly jerked away from him. He gasped, turning his hands to dig his nails into Ben’s palms.

Then it was gone, and Arrik felt empty and full at the same time, hallowed and impossibly alive. He made a noise and shook his head, all of it falling away. Shivering, Arrik tried to pull away from Ben but couldn’t, nails still in the meat of the Knight’s hand.

«It’s done,» Arrik gasped, turning his head again. «Assured.»

Ben felt caught in great waves of dizziness, nerve endings burned out as they hadn’t been in some time. He couldn’t even revel in the fact of what they’d done, the task they’d set themselves. There was no power in the galaxy like theirs, nothing to compare to this unmatched ability. But now he felt sick and used up inside, eyes on fire even though they were closed, chest heaving while he tried to breathe in what felt like the vacuum of space. He focused on Arrik’s nails, the bite of them into his flesh. It seemed like a simple way to keep hold of himself, what was left of himself, to pull himself back from the thing they’d done.

There was a flash of light behind his eyes and his tenuous grip on consciousness loosened. With a short huff of a sigh, the man who was at present neither Ben Solo nor Kylo Ren collapsed onto his side on the cold floor.

Arrik tried to pull him up, but ended up falling next to him. He was breathing hard, fireworks flashing behind his eyes. It was hard to concentrate, impossible to breathe. He took a deep, shuddering breath and turned on the ground, lying on his back next to the knight. His shoulder was near the man’s hip and he tried to say something but couldn’t.

He passed out there, still reeling from the enormity of what they had done, the scale of the movements. He had held entire fleets, entire systems in his hands. For a few minutes, for a few hours, even.

An incessant beeping woke Arrik. He turned and looked at his comm and then sat up slowly, putting his head in his hands, knees bent up. He didn’t know how to feel. He didn’t know whether it had been minutes or hours since he had fallen next to Ren. There was a hint of a headache behind his temples and he took a deep breath before standing up slowly.

The pounding receded for a few seconds as Hux turned to look out the windows. He blinked a few times and looked over the battlefield. The Vashi and Marian fleets were in tatters. There was nothing left for them. He took a deep breath and stepped forward, putting a hand on the glass, breathing harder. They had done it.

There was a chill in the air, and Hux leaned into the window, almost touching his nose to the glass. The enemy was destroyed. Utterly.

He took a step back and looked down at Ren, still on the ground. His eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. Ren had been the gateway, he had helped him rip through the enemy as if they were little more than paper. He knelt down next to the knight, shifted and then straddled the man’s hips, running his hands up Ren’s chest.

«Wake up.»

It was a demand, sharp as a knife. Arrik bared his teeth, leaning down over Kylo.

«Wake up!»

Instead of opening his eyes, the unconscious man sent an involuntary wave out toward Hux. It was dark and overwhelming, dragging Hux’s mind down toward the burned out exhaustion Kylo was lost in. Kylo Ren made no sound, no moan of pain; he was beyond that, beyond simple definitions of hurt or relief.

Hux growled, leaned back slightly and slapped Ren hard, a pounding headache making his temper short, the thrill of victory making him insistent.

“I said get up!”

Kylo Ren took a gasping breath and he half-sat up as his eyes snapped open. There were stars in his eyes and he saw them swirling around Hux’s head. His hand grabbed at Hux’s side bruisingly hard.

“Arrik!”

Arrik leaned down and kissed Kylo, knocking teeth, desperate and demanding. He put both hands in Ren’s hair, pulling his head up, grinding down against him as if he were seventeen and sneaking in a quick fuck back at the academy.

He wanted what Kylo had just shown him, allowed him. For an hour, maybe two, maybe less, they had been perfect. Hux growled against Kylo’s mouth, biting on his bottom lip, pushing Ren again.

Kylo pushed up against him, hands running over Hux’s body as though he needed to re-learn the lines and angles of him, where his bones pressed against his skin beneath his stiff uniform. He tasted of the metallic tang of blood, the sharp hiss of ozone.

He didn’t need to ask if they’d won; he’d felt the moment their enemies’ lines had broken. He didn’t need the statistics and numbers and maps that he knew Hux would go over in minute detail after everything was over. The victory was written in the hot energy pouring out of the man in his lap. It was marked out in the sharp punctuation of Hux’s fingers against him, in the slash of line that was his backbone.

What a kriffing addiction, he thought to himself through the rush of exhaustion and adrenaline.

Arrik pulled back, breathing hard, his eyes narrowed, something like anger and awe on his face. He swallowed, searched Kylo’s face, spreading his hands over Ren’s collarbones, holding him down on the floor.

“Explain,” his voice was hoarse, “what that was.”

Kylo shrugged against the cold metal beneath him, feeling the desire and jealousy and excitement and fury that defined Hux for the moment.

“Something that drove ancient Jedi and Sith to drink, I figure,” he said quietly and heard his own voice as ragged and grating as his mind felt. He pressed his thumb against Hux’s hipbone, wanting to leave a perfect oval of bruised flesh there. “They called it ‘battle meditation.’ I don’t know if I...ever want to do it again.” He knew it must have been different for the Force users in those old wars, trained in the skill, in strategy, controlling the ships and commanders on their own. Maybe that was easier. It had been hell to hold onto everything and siphon it through Hux, positions to him and the orders away from him.

Hux growled, leaning down to kiss Kylo again, gripping his shoulders, drawing his hands down Kylo’s chest.

“It was incredible,” Hux breathed, shifting down. He didn’t know if he wanted to fuck Kylo or start another fight. He pressed his hands against Ren’s ribs, wanting that feeling back. He set his jaw and shifted again, sitting up.

Kylo laid back and watched him, eyes half-lidded even in the gloom of the unlit room. It was a pleasure to see the general high on power; it brought color to his pale face and gave fire to his eyes. The Knight’s mouth curved slightly.

“You’re the victor here. There’s only one thing left for you to do.” He knew that Hux couldn’t have won without him, but it didn’t seem sporting of him to remind the man of that just yet.

Hux made another noise, holding onto Ren’s robe, tugging at him. “Take you right here?” He asked, looking out the windows, watching the TIE fleets return, the _Faultless_ and _Vindication_ turning to bombard Vaxa and Marai. Already he could see the latter smoking under Barril’s hits.

Hux swallowed, shifting to sit up a little more, still staring out the window.

“We should go. The paramounts will be on board soon.”

Kylo watched Hux’s face still, more interested in his reactions and expressions than he was in the dwindling battle outside the window. Past the transparisteel, it was just turning into stomping the ashes of a burned out system.

“Then hopefully you’ll do what I alluded to earlier,” he said quietly.

Arrik lipped his lips, looking down at Kylo. He nodded, putting a hand down on the center of the Knight’s chest. “It will be worth it.”

Kylo Ren laughed, and it was something dangerous, the sort of sound that would raise the hairs on the back of someone’s neck. He grabbed onto Hux’s wrist, sitting up in a sudden rush that brought them too close together. Leaning forward a little bit more, he exhaled against Hux’s ear.

“I wasn’t even talking about that,” he murmured. “I meant you should make it very clear who the leader of this battle was, who they should all defer to.” He traced the curve of Hux’s ear with the tip of his tongue, a delicate, meandering line of saliva on warm flesh, while he tightened his hand over the bones of Arrik’s wrist. “Then I’ll fuck you slow against the window so you can keep an eye on the galaxy you’ve conquered.”

Hux grinned, maybe for the first time in years, and ducked his head to bite Kylo’s neck.

“Let’s go.”

He stood up, maybe a little too fast, and offered his hand to Kylo.

Kylo grabbed onto Hux’s hand and pulled himself to his feet. His body immediately rebelled, the headache coming at him to drive thick nails into his forehead. Everything was burned out, everything was tired. His muscles were exhausted from the ground battle, and now that he could focus on his body, he realized there were likely several minor injuries he should look at when he had the chance.

He remembered the glass in his ribs, and the smug gloved hand pressing against it.

“You want me there, then?” he asked as he walked over to take his helmet from the table.

“You deserve to be there,” Hux responded, pulling his gloves back into place, adjusting his collar. He glanced over his shoulder at Ren, opening the door. “Let’s be conquerors.”

The lock hissed on his helmet as Kylo Ren walked to meet the general by the door. With his face hidden and shoulders squared, he was no longer the exhausted man he’d been on the floor. He was a silent, faceless monolith in black, intimidation and unexplained power itself.

“It’s something to get used to,” he said, voice strangely rounded by the modulator.

Hux smiled slightly, nodded, and then walked out in front of Ren. He sent the message to the two Star Destroyers, and both Colonels sent back affirmatives.

“We’ll go to the officer’s room upstairs. The others are taking shuttles now.”

Kylo Ren nodded, long strides keeping him almost at Hux’s side. He could feel the mood of the ship, though he was careful not to extend himself. He knew it would hurt, that he needed to heal. Meditation was what was ultimately required, but his skill with that had never been great.

Hux took the congratulations in stride, although he received only a few from the crew of the _Finalizer_. He went into the war room and pulled up the arena of battle, looking over the final moments, reliving that power again. He shook his head.

“How did you learn to do such a thing?”

Kylo looked over the maps, watching the ticking mechanical movements of the ships in slow motion, the screen not fully capturing the emptiness of space around the vessels as they spun and fired and exploded.

“I didn’t...I found it written about in a few places and read as much as I could. Mainly so I could tell you about it some night; I thought you’d find it amusing. I didn’t really expect to try it.” He paused, clasping his hands behind his back. “I wasn’t sure it would work. I was a little convinced we’d die.” He hadn’t even noticed the dried blood that had come from his nose.

“Why would we die?” Hux frowned, looking over at Ren. “Passing out maybe, but dead?”

Kylo couldn’t stop himself from laughing, even though it made his head throb angrily. He felt like he could sleep for two entire rotations.

“Are you kidding? That probably burned out more brain cells than you’d be comfortable considering. You could have a brain aneurysm. You’re not a Force user; it was hard enough on me, and I’m a little surprised you’re able to stand up and speak right now. I’m better at defending than I thought I was.” He shrugged and leaned forward to tap the screen. “This was a disaster. Whose ship was that?”

Hux pressed his mouth, not knowing enough to argue with Kylo Ren about the intricate ways that Force users manipulated the worlds around them. He sighed and shook his head, looking over at the area Kylo indicated.

“Barril. He lost sight of the larger battle.”

Behind the faceplate of his helmet, Kylo Ren’s expression hardened and his upper lip pulled up in a disgusted sneer. Barril.

“He focused all his attention on that little group of TIEs,” he said. “He left himself wide open to ion-cannon fire all along here. He could have lost you a Star Destroyer.”

“But he didn’t,” Hux said softly, frowning as he looked over the slew of reports that streamed in after the battle. He could only process so many, quickly pushing petty officers and pilots to the back of the queue. “He will be given a chance to explain himself.”

“Of course, general,” Kylo Ren said slowly. “One should always be given a chance to explain one’s failures before a large group of people. Or before a man and his enforcer.”

“You’re enjoying his shortcomings too much, Knight.” Hux sighed, looking over at him again

“Hardly. He was burning out my mind with his idiocy,” Kylo Ren said, eyeroll effectively hidden by the helmet.

Hux smirked, shaking his head. “I was the one who corrected him,” he said. “You’ll have to behave yourself when the officers come in.”

“I’ll be silent as the grave,” Kylo intoned. “After all, what could I possibly add to the dressing down I’m sure they’ll receive.”

“And will I be feeling all your annoyance and resentment the entire time?”

“Would you like to?” Kylo asked, stepping forward before balling his hand into a fist and dropping his arm by his side. He could not allow himself the simple pleasure of slapping the other man’s ass. That’s what being this meant. He mourned it for a moment.

Hux snorted, shaking his head. “Just behave, Ren.”

Saying nothing, but letting the other man feel his lazy amusement, Kylo Ren stepped back to stand unmoving closer to the dark wall as he waited for the rest of the officers to arrive. He was a looming storm at all times, prone to unpredictable violence that even he couldn’t always control, but to be perfectly honest, he was beyond exhausted and only keeping his feet through strength of will.

And the fact that he refused to let Arrik Hux be alone in a room with a man who called him ‘Rikki.’

Elmisand and her two secondaries arrived first, accompanied by Mitaka and Derr’wan. Colonel Shara Elmisand was a dark skinned human, some shades of green under her complexion. Hux had always suspected she was some part Mirialan, but had never felt quite bold enough to ask.

She shook hands with the General and then sat down, pulling out one of her code cylinders and sliding into the port in front of her chair. All the reports from her command that hadn’t been uploaded to the _Finalizer’s_ mainframe were quickly transferred. Hux frowned, shifting forward to look over the information. Here were real results that had come from the battle mediation Ren had drawn him into.

Hux continued to look through the short reports from pilots and officers making decisions on ion cannons and thrusters. It was incredible, the kind of control he had. As he read over the information he realized he could fill in the blanks in between thoughts and actions. His mouth went dry as he pushed the reports away. He knew because he had been there.

The doors opened again as Colonel Barril came into the room, followed by Majors Baharghi and Lekram. Kylo Ren’s eyes watched the colonel as he walked across the room, but his helmet never moved.

Barril went right over to Hux, saluting and shaking his hand firmly. He did the same with Elmisand and then sat down at Hux’s right hand, smirking as the General brought up the field of battle.

In the greyer shadows by the wall, Kylo observed the room with more than sight. He felt the exultation of battle, the leftover adrenaline that reminded you how very alive you were after feeling death’s exhalation on the back of your neck. He also felt the respect for Hux, though there were varying degrees filtering through the sensation. From some, pleased and unsurprised satisfaction that the young general had engineered their victory. From others, the respect was more of a grudging affair, a belated admission that without Hux, this siege would have dragged on for more longer. He himself kept the explosive victory and too-intense intimacy of the real battle close. There was no one here who could understand what had actually defeated the Flesaram system. They didn’t understand the crushing power of the Knights of Ren or the almost supernatural way he and Arrik had played with the lives around them like small toys.

So he stayed quiet, watching and unmoving. He knew he didn’t need to be fear just yet.

Hux congratulated the officers, then pulled up a larger map of the system. He outlined the clean up mission, the destruction of Vaxa and Marai, the takeover of Aralat. Hux glanced at Barril and then assigned control of the mineral-rich to Elmisand, even though Barril was the quadrant’s paramount.

Barril set his jaw but didn’t speak out while the rest of the officers were at the table.

They continued to discuss the invasion. Colonel Barril’s teeth ground together until at last the table stood up. Hux was satisfied with the results of the meeting, happy that he and Ren had indeed turned the tide of battle, completely and effectively.

Barril hung back, and after Hux nodded at Elmisand, she and the four lower ranking officers left the room. He closed the door and turned back to Hux, ignoring Kylo Ren, who had remained unmoved.

“I should be given governorship of Aralat,” Joran said, starting toward Arrik. The general’s back straightened and he tilted his head up, not backing down from Barril. “Elmisand answers to me.”

“She is not unfit, and she displayed considered and effective judgement throughout the battle.”

“I am the paramount of this quadrant, general,” he spoke quietly, almost pleading, taking another step forward. “You are deliberately undermining my authority in this region. It sends a message to the other systems.”

Arrik Hux straightened his back and his eyes became cold and utterly unfriendly. He didn’t look at Kylo Ren, he didn’t look anywhere but at Joran Barril.

“You will follow orders, Colonel.”

Kylo Ren allowed himself a short smile, hands gripped into fists by his side. Satisfaction. Barril was subordinate and needed to remember just how much lower on the scale of the galaxy than Hux he was. He kept himself in the shadows, knowing there was nothing to betray his position. He wasn’t his grandfather, breathing noisily and ominously. He was something silent, the storm that struck without the benefit of a rumble of thunder. He was the killer lightning.

Barril set his jaw, narrowing his eyes. “What’s this about, Arrik?” he asked quietly. “What are you punishing me for?”

“The battle speaks for itself, Joran.” Hux matched his address easily, not moving an inch. “Elmisand displayed exemplary leadership, she deserves this merit.”

“At my expense?” Barril hissed, glaring. “This is disgraceful.”

“What is disgraceful is your whining after your shortcomings have been pointed out to you by a superior, Colonel,” Kylo Ren said evenly, stepping forward out of the shadowed area by the wall. The overhead lights caught on the curve of his helmet first, then flashed along the silver lines chasing around his eyes. “You tip dangerously onto the side of dissension.”

Barril looked over at Kylo Ren, not trying to hide his disgust. “And what do you know of military affairs, Lord Ren? You’re not an officer of the First Order, this doesn’t concern you.”

“It concerns me when I see the Supreme Leader’s campaigns draining the First Order of resources because of incompetence.” Kylo’s voice rumbled through his vocoder, his distaste for the other man darkening his tone further. “You were on the road to failure before your superiors stepped in, and now you want a prize because you managed to survive through it?”

“I handled my part of the attack; I executed my directive.” Barril hadn’t stepped away from his position in front of Hux, sneering at Kylo. “I was fighting a large-scale battle, not fucking around playing at intimidation tactics with a gang of thugs.”

“That’s enough, Colonel!” Hux snapped, holding his hand out in front of Ren, willing him to stay put. “You are out of line.”

Hux’s hand notwithstanding, Kylo didn’t need to get closer to Barril to make his point. He didn’t need to say anything as his anger flared up, the dark current of the Force rising with it. His hand flew out, fingers tensed as he exerted the Force on the other man, dragging him forward a few feet before holding him in position, off balance if not for the power holding him. Hux’s eyes widened, and he took a step after Barril, focused on Ren.

“You are a worthless, replaceable thing,” he spat in a low voice, “Who takes liberties because of past favors. Your inability to see the bigger picture could have cost the Order a Star Destroyer, though I suppose the loss of its commander would have perhaps been a blessing.”

“Ren,” Hux warned, taking another step towards them.

Barril bared his teeth, his hair falling out of its part. He struggled against the Force, but couldn’t push away.

“You have no idea,” Barril hissed, pulling at the space around his neck, glaring at Ren. “You have lost nothing, sacrificed nothing, you’re a fresh wound in my side. I have taken shits older than your time here.”

“You seem to forget that it’s the newest wound that kills you. Colonel.” Kylo Ren gave the rank the sound of an insult. He pressed his mouth, unseen behind the black helmet, but his fingers stretched out slightly before he brought his hand down a few inches, palm parallel to the floor. Barril was pressed to his knees, down onto the floor, an insect under an unbreakable crushing strength. “Don’t presume to speak of impossible sacrifices which you alone have borne or understand. Your own seem to only be excuses.”

Hux took another step forward, his jaw set.

Barril struggled against the invisible bonds, his composure falling away. “You have no idea what I have done! What I’ve sacrificed! I’ve dedicated my life to the Order, this is none of your business!”

Hux set his jaw, glaring at Ren.

«Let him go. His temper tantrum will not affect my decision.»

“Your desperation speaks volumes about your ability to maintain stability in the region,” Kylo Ren said, dropping his hand as well as the pressure on the other man. He wanted to shove him down onto the floor, hear his head strike the metal. It was hard to let go. Stepping back, he turned his head slightly to look at Hux.

Hux swallowed, taking another step forward.

“You will accept my decision as the highest ranking commander of this quadrant and you will not question me further.”

Barril turned slightly, looking over at Hux.

“Playing favorites again, Rikki?” Barril asked, his handsome face twisted. “It’s worked thus far, hasn’t it? Picking and choosing who you’re close to, who gets special treatment. Phasma, Holloran, me. All because of your childhood connection to Snoke, you just think you have the Order turning in the palm of your hand.”

Hux’s jaw tightened and he took another step forward. He reached down and grabbed Barril’s jaw, turning the Colonel’s face up. For a few seconds Hux considered hitting Joran himself, kneeing him in the side, sending him sprawling on the floor. He wanted to hurt Barril, fire take any previous attachments.

“Watch your tongue, Colonel.” Hux hissed, standing up and drawing away from the man on his knees. The images flashed through his mind fast, Barril’s nose bloody, Barril naked and tied up, grinning under Hux, Barril clawing at the floor, coughing blood, reeling from Hux’s boot. He took a step back instead, looking over at Ren.

He turned then, his back to Ren and Barril, and stalked over to the doors, going through without another word to Joran.

«Don’t kill him.»

Kylo’s black helmet ducked once, a nod with the gesture of a bow. He looked down at the man on the floor and saw him for what he was now-- no threat. This was an abject thing, nearly below his notice. To kill him would have been a swift thing, an efficient slice with his lightsaber. A shining arc and the snuff of the thing that was Joran Barril’s life in the Force.

His heavy boot connected with Barril’s side with a satisfying sound, both from the impact and the air forced out of the colonel’s lungs. With an almost negligent twitch of his fingers, he sent the man flying across the room to crash into the wall before falling to the floor again. Kylo Ren stood still for a moment, watching with an almost clinical detachment while Barril tried to raise himself with jerky movements. It was good to watch him struggle, he thought.

It was even better to see the look in the other man’s eyes when he strode across the room toward him. His hand was already out to focus his concentration on Barril’s mind, which would open to him like a fruit split on the hot ground. When he first leaned into his memories, he saw the man’s panic during the battle, his lack of direction as it wore on. As he delved deeper, Barril fought him.

When his screams died away, Kylo Ren left the room in blackness. The hall seemed too bright to him and he narrowed his eyes within the helmet.

Hux was standing in the hallway outside of the meeting room. He grabbed Ren’s arm and turned him towards the lift, his jaw set. He had felt Ren’s movements, Barril’s fear and panic and hurt. It was satisfying and terrifying, everything Hux wanted.

He pushed the exhaustion to the back of his mind, focusing instead on his hand around Ren’s elbow. He only had a few thoughts running through his head, and they were all focused on Kylo Ren.

«Good.»

Kylo was still slightly out of breath, though he didn’t let any of that show. No matter how he wanted to lean back into the wall of the lift, he kept himself upright, back straight though his shoulders sagged slightly.

«He’ll live. For whatever use you have left for him.»

«Minimal,» Hux responded, sliding his hand from Kylo’s elbow to his back, his hand spread. «I have many more uses for you.»

Without turning his head, Kylo looked to Hux from the corner of his eye. The excitement in the general override his obvious exhaustion; even with his duties finished, there was something more than adrenaline firing through his veins.

«Yet you wanted him alive,» Kylo murmured into Hux’s head, statement rather than question, though he didn’t know why Hux had bothered. Maybe it was past affection. Maybe it was just to torment him further. Maybe it was because he didn’t have the authority yet.

Or maybe it was because he wanted Barril to remain a living testament to Hux’s new power. How he had not struck the man in anger, nor had he called in stormtroopers and arrested him. He had walked away and left him in the dangerous hands of a man outside the First Order, a man who potentially had no limits. Arrik Hux’s enforcer.

«Dead Colonels mean paperwork,» Hux said as he pushed Ren along. He could feel the exhaustion coming off him. “Stay with me, Ren.”

Kylo turned to look at him curiously. It was not the type of statement he ever expected to hear from Hux.

“I’m right here, general. Do you have more need of me tonight?”

Hux swallowed, nodding. He reached and scanned his cylinder, letting them into the officer’s wing and then his own suite. “I do.”

Kylo didn’t argue or ask further questions as he walked into the room with Hux. He’d led the general through a battle tonight; Hux could lead him through the rest.

Inside, Hux pulled him through the suite gently. He stopped in the middle of the room, reaching up to pull Ren’s head down, his fingers finding the latch. Hux watched his face carefully as he dropped the helmet on the couch.

“If you’re tired, leave,” Hux said quietly, taking a step back. “You’ve done well.”

“That isn’t why you brought me here,” Kylo answered, not denying that he was tired nor that he’d done well. He was a victor as well as Hux was; he was the instrument and the power and he could feel how badly Hux wanted to touch him and be near him if for no other reason than that.

“No,” Hux muttered, pulling off his gloves, tossing them next to the helmet. “It’s not.”

“Should I say I’m at your command, general? The battle is won.” He glanced down to watch Hux’s hands, the strangely erotic reveal of his pale skin when the black leather came off.

“Well fought, well won.” Hux reached out, pulling Ren close by the loose fabric of his tunic, pulling him down to kiss him. He bit at Ren’s lip and nearly growled, tightening his grip on the fabric. “Well earned.”

There it was, the lust that had pulled at his mouth before Hux had moved in closer. He let the general hold him down to his level, meeting his eyes and trying to read them. They were like brilliant blue green marbles that fire could strike if the light hit them just right.

“Tell me what you want then?” Kylo made it a soft question, a teasing question.

“You, against the wall.” His voice was low. His hands fumbled with Ren’s belt. “I want you to say my name as I fuck you.”

Kylo laughed low in his throat, letting Hux’s momentum push him back until his shoulderblades hit the bedroom wall. He’d say his name, the name he was the only one to say. Arrik. Not the name his dead father had given him, and not the puerile version of his name the man likely still writhing on the floor of the situation room had thought was his right to say.

“Arrik,” he murmured, leaning down to kiss his mouth, his jaw, to bite hard at his throat and know there would be a possessive mark there tomorrow. “Yeah, you do that...if you’re tall enough.” He laughed again when Hux’s fervor increased.

Hux bared his teeth again, pushing him against the glass and quickly undoing the belt and robe. He wanted Ren, all of him.

There wasn’t a lot of foreplay when Arrik wanted another man. The lube was flown into Arrik’s hand thanks to Ren, and Arrik had no shame admitting that Kylo’s gift was absolutely necessary to keep the larger man pressed up against the glass. Stars, it was a fucking thrill though. Ren gripped the beams that criss crossed the windows, using his own nearly supernatural strength and the force to keep himself up.

At the end of it, Kylo Ren let himself collapse onto the cold floor, dragging Hux with him. He slept there, without fear of being woken. He knew that Hux would sleep deeply as well, for once, and anyone who dared disturb them would be counted a casualty of war.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (( remember there are no happy endings ))

Hours later, Hux dragged himself off the floor. He was tired enough to not care about how naked he was, and instead focused on pulling Ren onto his feet as well. Together they went back to his bedroom and collapsed.

Arrik managed to pull the covers over their two bodies, fighting off the chill of the metal surrounding them. He was still bone tired, and fatigued both mentally and physically from the fight they had won together. Kylo had already wrapped himself around the other man, larger, taller, almost overwhelming him in the bed, warming him even before the blankets could.

It was a long night for the two of them, exhausted to their core. They were a shared person during the battle, a shared consciousness larger than the _Finalizer_ , larger than the First Order fleets that surrounded the system. Despite that, small things still happened. At the end of the shift Hux’s pad began to beep, and the officer turned over, trying to push Ren’s arms out of the way to get to the tech.

“Stars, someone fucking…” Hux growled, trying to sit up, wincing from the headache that came on as the lights started to slowly rise in his cabin.

Kylo was already frowning, eyes closed tightly against the encroaching light. He made an annoyed sound, low and growly, as he brought one hand up and gestured almost clumsily. He closed his fist; there was a crunching noise, then quiet again.

“Unnecessary,” Hux muttered, falling back on the bed, running his hands over his eyes.

Kylo rolled over onto his stomach, flinging his arm across Arrik’s bare torso. “More than necessary,” he said lowly, voice muffled in the flattened pillow. “That incessant beeping wasn’t anything important.” His head was throbbing, a band of pain already laid across his forehead before he’d opened his eyes.

Hux took a deep breath, laying his hand over Kylo’s wrist. He could feel the pain their mediation had caused. It rippled between them, and Hux had to take deep breaths to keep himself focused. “You don’t know that.”

“As the leader of the Knights of Ren, I deemed it unimportant,” Kylo mumbled, pulling Hux a little closer to his side. He was tangled in the twisted sheets and blankets. “Dim those lights too, or I will.”

Arrik squeezed Kylo’s arm, shifting. “They’re on a kriffing timer.”

“You’re telling me you’re building a weapon that blow up a star system, but you can’t turn off the lights.” Kylo turned his head to look at Arrik, eyes still squinted against the brightness in the bedroom. “That’s what you’re telling me?”

“I am not prone to laziness,” Hux murmured, shifting to slide his other hand through Ren’s hair. This was a terrible mistake, to find intimacy so easy as this was.

“It’s not laziness. I’m asking you to turn the lights out. Asking you to do something so that I can be lazy.” When he was worn out and aching, naked and wrapped in warm blankets and another warm body, there was something of Ben Solo in Kylo Ren, something that crept back into his voice and the way his limbs settled against Hux’s. He sighed quietly, comfortably.

Arrik took a deep breath, sighed and gently tweaked Kylo’s hair. “Get my pad.”

Kylo smirked, eyes still closed though his lashes moved slightly on his cheeks. He raised the hand that had been resting on Arrik’s side and the muscles in his forearm tensed where he arm lay against the other man’s torso. While he’d crushed one of Hux’s datapads, he knew that there were likely ten in the room that were perfectly serviceable. He called one that he’d noticed on the stand by the desk into his hand, then dropped it onto Hux’s chest.

Arrik quickly turned off the lights and put the pad on the shelf by his bedside. He shifted slightly, arching his back and stretching under Kylo.

“I’ll be needed soon. You can stay here if you’d like.”

“No.” Kylo paused before explaining, sounding slightly smug and sulky at the same time, a strange combination. “You’ll need me there beside you. A reminder.” He tucked his fingers under Arrik’s side again, anchoring him to the bed.

Arrik made a noise, wrapping his hand around the back of Kylo’s neck. “You’re an exceptional menace in the morning,” he sighed, taking another deep breath. “Ten more minutes then.”

“If you set an alarm for those ten minutes,” Kylo muttered, “I’ll break the alarm and then do unspeakable things to you.”

“That’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Hux said, smirking. “There will be meeting soon.”

“Should I be there? Be honest.” Kylo yawned, settling back in comfortably.

“I’d like you there.”

“Then I’ll be there.” Kylo smiled and opened his eyes. “Can we make an entrance?”

“You know that your grandfather had a flair for the dramatic as well,” Arrik muttered, shifting a little and then closing his eyes. «What are you imagining, Lord Ren?»

Kylo Ren smiled at the comparison. It was compliment, a sleepy, early, pre-fighting compliment, and he accepted it graciously. He turned toward Hux a bit more, tugging him against his chest when he’d turned onto his side.

«We walk in together, your face, hair, uniform severe. You announce that while Barril had been paramount in this quadrant, you had chosen a different commander to leave in charge. You turn to me and make a disgusted sound, then remark, ‘Lord Ren, you could have cleaned the spattered blood off your helmet first.’» The amusement in his mental voice was dark but no less genuine.

Arrik made a noise, smirking. «That seems excessive, even for you.»

«Do you want to make an entrance or just walk in loudly? You don’t even have a cape,» Kylo Ren’s laughter rippled across Hux’s mind as he leaned in to kiss his jaw.

Hux tilted his head up, smirking. He took a deep breath, letting Ren pull him close, hold him tight, kiss him in the dark of the room. «A cape. In between you and Phasma I think there are plenty of capes on board this ship.»

“I don’t wear a cape,” Kylo objected in mock anger when he pulled back. “You need to do more research into dramatic fashion.”

“No.” Arrik said quietly. He took a deep breath and shifted. “Up.”

Kylo shook his head once and kissed his jawline again, then ducked his head to kiss his neck. Even that wasn’t sufficient; he closed his teeth on the skin he’d just kissed, hard enough to mark.

“I’m not going to convince you,” the officer murmured, shifting again on the bed. He stayed quiet for a few more minutes before sitting up. “I’m getting ready for the meeting.”

Arrik stood, pushing Ren’s arms off him and stretching. “If you’d like to wear a cape for the effect, I won’t discourage you.”

Kylo flopped over onto his back, still lazy in the dark as he watched Arrik’s pale back reflect the dim light that was rising again.

Hux went through the refresher, not bothering to use water, brushing the grime off with the sonic. He went through his room and got changed quickly, buttoning his jacket collar snugly, making sure that his hair was precise. «I don’t think you will be asked to report at the larger meeting.»

By the time Hux was doing up the tiny hidden clasps on his uniform front, Kylo Ren was headed past him to the refresher. «Just give me a time to show up.»

«Late.» Hux smirked, looking over at him, tilting his head up. «I’ll pretend to offended. You can make your entrance.»

Kylo paused when he was just beside the general, shoulder to shoulder with him as he turned to look at him. The headache beating in his temples would just have to be ignored; he wouldn’t give up victory’s spoils that easily.

«Whatever is your pleasure, general.» He leaned down slightly to kiss him, feeling the eternal temptation to bite at his mouth hard enough to split the delicate skin of his lip and taste his blood in his mouth. He let it pass, pulling back and walking to the refresher.

Hux was slightly flushed as Ren pulled away, but he didn’t lean into him. He set his back straight and took a deep breath, settling himself. He was the commanding officer. He was the ruling power, he was the conqueror.

Arrik Hux took another deep breath, closed his eyes, steeled himself.

He was the conqueror.

The general left Ren in his rooms, quickly making his way to the bridge. He was fifteen minutes behind his usual schedule, but still early to the meeting. It wouldn’t do for him to be late, and he refused to be anything other than the perfect image of a First Order officer. A First Order conqueror, and one worthy of Star Killer command.

The colonels trickled in, again flanked by their corporals and seconds. Phasma stood at the back of the table behind Arrik’s chair, two of the Elect on the other side of the room, on either side of the door.

Barril came in, obviously having used some kind of bacta pack to heal the cuts on his face and hands. Hux barely acknowledged his arrival, nodding as he sat down.

The debriefing procedure was short, formulaic and, despite the scale of the operation and the massive undertaking on multiple fronts, the meeting wasn’t scheduled to go long. It was broad strokes, and Hux made sure that he knew the answers to every question asked, especially those he asked the other officers.

“Colonel Barril, your report on the second phase of the invasion.”

Barril set his jaw, looking over at the General. It wasn’t enough of a defiance for anyone to register, but Hux recognized it and tilted his head up, narrowing his eyes slightly. He almost dared Joran Barril to overstate his claims. At the back of the room, away from everyone’s attention, the doors slid open and Kylo Ren walked in smoothly, a surprisingly silent figure for his size.

“We focused on the northern flank, unfortunately leaving our central starfighter fleets unprotected.” Barril said evenly, not looking away from Hux. Behind him, Kylo raised his chin slightly, the lights overhead reflected in the silver on his helmet.

Hux gestured, indicating that Barril continue. The officer worked his jaw, and then looked down before he responded.

“The central starfleet then began their assault, but were exposed. They quickly realized that they were getting beat back, and retreated. We then had to divert forces from another section of the system to recover the ground. Eventually we were able to push back the Marian fighters and break through their defenses.”

Kylo walked from the back of the room, jostling Barril’s chair without needing to touch it.There was a tangible drop in temperature in the room, though there was no movement of air, no cold breeze. He didn’t say anything, just walked up to stand beside Hux.

The whole room was silent, hushed and breathless and waiting for someone to say something. The pitted faceplate of Kylo Ren’s helmet gave nothing away, though he smirked behind the imposing facade. Finally, he gestured with a gloved hand.

“Go on, Colonel. Continue.”

Barril glanced at Kylo and then over at the General. Hux’s eyes were steely.

“That’s the report, Lord Ren,” Barril said, not looking away from Hux. “After we received support from Colonel Elmisand, we broke the Marian lines and proceeded to bomb the cities on the surface.”

“Good that you had someone telling you what to do, Colonel. Left in your hands, the fleet would be lost.” Kylo’s voice was full of malice, all jagged, unforgiving edges. His hand clenched by his side. He could feel the tension in the room, the fear that moved around him, inspired by his presence. He wanted to bloody Barril’s face again.

More than that, he wanted Arrik to watch and enjoy it. He wanted to cup Hux’s pale cheek with a bloody hand and see the mark his fingers left on his face.

Barril worked his jaw, glaring at the table. He glanced up at Hux, as if asking if this was entirely necessary.

Hux tilted his head up slightly, gesturing to Elmisand for her report. It was obvious that Colonel Barril had been excused further embarrassment.

«That’s enough, Ren.»

Enough. What was enough? But Kylo Ren let himself step back slightly, more shadowed when he wasn’t directly under the overhead light.

Hux continued with the rest of the meeting without event. As he stood up at the end of the meeting, the entire room did as well, Barril less than a second behind everyone else. General Arrik Hux didn’t look at anyone else in the room as left, sweeping out without pause.

Inside the meeting room Barril set his jaw and placed his hands on the table. He took a deep breath and glanced over at his Corporals.

Kylo Ren waited a moment, taking in the feelings of the room. He turned his helmet toward Barril, just silent and triumphant, before he walked out after Hux.

Hux didn’t turn, moving through the bridge to his position at his command station. He looked over his shoulder as Ren followed him, but quickly shifted his sights ahead. The officers would be leaving soon, and the time of his ultimate accomplishment was drawing nearer.

«We are returning to Star Killer. Tell your Knights to leave or follow as you wish.»

Star Killer was a place he was not eager to see again, but Kylo pushed his instinctive disgust down as he watched Hux’s straight back.

«I will consult with the Supreme Leader to see where we are needed.»

«We will speak to him when we return to the base.»

Kylo raised his eyebrows, though the expression was lost on the general. He stepped up to walk beside him, momentarily lengthening his stride.

«Then all my Knights will accompany me,» he told Hux, curious about the man’s reaction.

Hux tilted his head up, not looking over at Ren. He knew how it seemed, the two of them moved with a singular purpose, worked in tandem with each other. It was seamless and it unsettled the crew and officers around them. Even Phasma had remarked on the strangeness of it.

All of it just proved to Hux not only how special Ren was, but how special he was, too.

He nodded his approval and turned back towards the universe in front of him. Soon the time would come when he would make his presence known, not just to the Resistance and the Senate, but the entire Universe.

He smirked, tilting his head up. His time would come. Soon, the entire universe would know the name Hux. 

* * *

 

The journey back to Star Killer Base was uneventful. The _Faultless_ and the _Vindication_ returned to their respected posts, Elmisand taking her place as paramount in the quadrant.

A few days after their arrival saw the two of them standing in front of the large holochamber. Only a week or so until the complete and utter destruction of the Senate and Hux was practically radiating with self importance.

He and Ren had continued their casual liaison, touching each other in private, but not quite regularly. Hux had anticipated that Snoke would want to speak to them together, and had to remind Ren that their connection endangered them. He also had to remind himself, at times.

To anyone looking at him at that moment, Kylo Ren was unmovable and closed off to the rest of the galaxy. His only connection was to the Force, and that was as natural to him as breathing. His feet were planted apart as he waited for the call to begin, face neutral even behind the faceplate of his mask.

“You’ve already sent your account of the battle, haven’t you?” he asked the man beside him, attention still faced forward.

“A comprehensive briefing, yes.” Hux was coming to hate the limitations of speech, preferring their mental connection over anything else. Quite simply, spoken words didn’t seem enough, didn’t seem appropriate for the enormity of the two of them. Part of this was, he knew, absolute hubris. “I haven’t been told what this meeting is regarding. I have a suspicion it’s regarding the ultimate purpose of Star Killer.”

The mention of the weapon’s name brought the taste of bile to the back of Kylo’s mouth, no matter how he tried to inure himself to the the deadness of the planet, the weapon that had grown like a cancer in the hollowed out rock beneath his feet. He was grateful that this moment found him closed off from Hux. The man’s devotion to Star Killer was too much for him to process, even though he knew the First Order’s need for such a weapon was obvious. It was a power that would prove the Order’s imminent rise as the new authority throughout the galaxy.

“I doubt I’m needed in a meeting of that sort. I have little to do with that particular...aspect of the First Order’s offensive,” he replied carefully.

“You were asked for, Lord Ren,” Hux said softly, tilting his head up slightly. “I’m sure there was a reason.”

The lights dimmed as the shutters along the windows slid upwards, covering the scant light that seeped in. Behind them, a small flashing bulb warned of Snoke’s appearance, casting strange shadows.

Hux took a deep breath, steeling himself, using some of the new techniques Ren had taught him. He knew that he was still nothing, his defences far less than anything that would stand up to even a minor assault on his psyche. Still, it was something.

Snoke flickered into existence, his long fingers gripping his hewn throne. He nodded once, leaning forward.

“Lord Ren. General Hux.”

“We stand before you victorious, Supreme Leader, thanks to your guidance,” Kylo immediately answered, bowing low with his black gloved hands in fists by his sides. He was sure that that Hux hadn’t shared their true technique with Snoke. It was too much to tell him, too much to give up of themselves. He let himself feel a slight flare of fear in his stomach. Hux could give him up. It was a possibility, wasn’t it? It always had been.

But Arrik wouldn’t now. Not now. He knew what it was like to kiss his inner thighs and caress his mind with a voice no one else could hear. Kylo Ren took a deep breath as he straightened, looking up at the projection of his master.

General Hux inclined his head, listened to Ren talk, turning to look at him for only a few seconds before facing Snoke again.

“I have been informed of your victories.” It was the plural you, Ren and Hux, Knight and General. “I am satisfied with the competence displayed. The conquests of the Flesaram and Botaran systems are not inconsequential.”

Snoke shifted, sitting up straighter against his stone chair.

“The time is drawing near, soon the destruction of the Senate will echo across our universe.”

At this proclamation, Hux seemed to grow a few inches beside Ren.

“There is one complication,” Snoke continued. “The Resistance has become suspicious of our activities. They do not yet know the location of Star Killer, but as soon as the weapon is fired we will be revealed.”

Hux pressed his mouth and didn’t answer. They had almost impenetrable shields, and surface canons on the base to protect the planet. Above them, the _Finalizer_ was viewable from the surface of Star Killer, a phantom dagger ready to cut through any who might stand in her way.

“Lord Ren, you and your Knights will patrol the area for any sign of the Resistance. Should any appear, you will inform General Hux, and then proceed to eliminate them. Any appearance near the Star Killer System should be seen as a threat to our purpose.”

Hux pushed down the feeling of being passed over. It was unfair to Kylo Ren. The Knight had fought hard for the distinction, and he had his own important honors. He took a deep breath, ignored the split second of petty jealousy and he realized that immediately after doing so, he allowed to feel proud of Ren instead.

It wasn’t pride Kylo felt, however; it was the sense of duty, a complete lack of surprise that he would be given what was essential a patrol responsibility.

“General, continue your tests. We must remain on schedule.”

“Within the month, there will be no more Republic,” Hux stated firmly. “We will prepare the weapon.”

“Very good, General.” Snoke shifted backward. “Your victories do much to increase your reputation and further the causes of the First Order. Consider your next few weeks carefully, as they will determine the future of the entire universe.”

There it was again, the confirmation of what Arrik already knew. His own importance, his own place in the universe.

He nodded once, pushing down the grandiose ideas. It wouldn’t help him.

“You are dismissed. I need to speak with Kylo Ren alone.”

“Yes, Supreme Leader.” Hux inclined his head and turned away from the holoscreen. He didn't’ look at Ren, didn't give him any consideration as he left the chamber. Everything was closed off, they had to be.

The doors slid closed and Snoke leaned forward, the room becoming icy, chilled with his power.

“You will face a great test, my young knight.”

Kylo Ren felt the second Hux had left the room, though he could still feel the light of him in the ship. Even as carefully guarded and walled up as he’d made his mind, sensing Hux somewhere nearby was more instinct than conscious skill.

He raised his chin slightly, feeling the power and not yielding anything to it. Not yet.

“Tell me of my next mission, Supreme Leader. I am ready to go wherever you command me.” Anything to get away from this weapon as the countdown continued. He felt how pointless it was to pretend that he’d be sent to another system, but something in him needed to say it aloud.

“My order stands, Knight. You will remain with Star Killer.” Snoke said, tilting his head up. “I cannot keep this trial from you. Meditate and reflect on your future, find the thread that leads you forward and walk along it.”

Kylo Ren blinked twice inside the confines of his helmet. He wanted to argue, to scream. That overwhelming urge to escape rose up in him briefly before he quashed it. He couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to stand on this weapon when it fired. He didn’t know if he’d be able to keep his feet.

His voice was a dispassionate monotone when he finally spoke, bowing his head with deference that was real but acceptance that was not.

“Of course, Supreme Leader. My future is tied to the future of the First Order and the return from chaos the galaxy will finally be ready for.” Kylo bowed further, not realizing how tightly he was gripping the edges of his heavy wrap where it fell at his sides.

“Of course.” Snoke’s tone was icy, he heard the distance in Kylo Ren’s words. “A fast, four days.”

Kylo Ren pressed his mouth, but embraced the order. He needed to clear his head, clear himself. He’d never been good at meditation, preferring to speak his thoughts aloud to sort through them, but perhaps this would be good. The purity of his empty body in the silence of this empty, dead planet.

“I will do it, Supreme Leader. I wish to grow...closer to what I can become.” He licked his lips, which suddenly felt dry. “I know there’s more for me to learn.”

“You must examine your place. If you what to grow into your potential you must truly know yourself.”

“Self-examination will only take me so far,” Kylo insisted, stepping forward on the holopad.

“That is true. But you have not yet realized what you are capable of.” Snoke said, voice low and gravelly. “Continue to reflect on your own purpose.”

Kylo’s fists clenched at his sides again. Reflection was for those too weak to take action, too indecisive to take final steps.

“When will you show me more?” he pressed, knowing that he was potentially going too far.

Snoke raised his hand, fingers spread out. The power didn’t come slowly, it came down fast and hard, pressure increasing in the room. “When you are ready, Kylo Ren,” he growled. “Not before.”

Kylo’s eyes closed quickly, but he didn’t flinch otherwise. He’d come to learn how to let some of the power roll off him, releasing it back into the Force. He took a deep breath and looked up at his master again.

“I endeavor to have patience, Supreme Leader. It’s only that I want to be as much as I can, all of my potential fulfilled.” Kylo Ren shook his head once before stepping back.

“You will, in time.” Snoke sat back, his hand dropping. “Four days, and then four days again.”

“What?” Kylo frowned deeply, looking down then up again. Was this penance for asking about his training? He watched the Supreme Leader’s face for some hint of his intention, but as usual, the sentient’s face was impassive. A total of eight days of meditation, four fast days, then a rest, then four more. By the end of the last, he wasn’t sure if he’d feel purified or just ready to kill the next person who spoke to him. “I...yes, Supreme Leader.” He bowed slightly again.

Snoke’s head tilted up and he slid his hands back on the arms of the seat. He nodded once. “Very good. The next time I speak to you the Republic will cease to exist, and you will be able to claim your place among the new order.”

“I am ready and eager for that day.” The Republic had never done anything for him but tell him he was too dangerous and pull his parents apart. He’d lived well on its failings and loopholes, its corrupt representatives out on remote stations and planets. He had no doubts that it should fall, that it should fall. If only the feeling in the pit of his stomach would go away.

Snoke seemed slightly more satisfied, and he nodded, shifting back on the chair. “Go. I will speak to you soon.”

Kylo Ren’s bow was perfectly executed, low and subservient but with control behind it. That was, perhaps, the lesson he’d learned most keenly from the Supreme Leader. How to control himself, his words, his actions. He’d never believed that he needed it before; his role models had been people who said they had control, but never seemed to.

His violent outbursts had been deadened by the torture Snoke had imposed on him in the snowy forest. If he could channel it all into enough fights, if he could just continually be tossed into battles on one planet and then directly sent to the next, he could do this. His connection to the Force was as strong as ever, as was his desire to destroy his Master.

If what he’d read was was true, that was no surprise. It seemed even the greatest Sith lords had felt similar emotions and had used them to great effect.

“Thank you, Supreme Leader.”

Snoke inclined his head, not needing to tell his young apprentice anything else. Snoke knew that Kylo Ren would be monitored, reported on, assessed. He gestured and his own transmission faded away, leaving only a chill in the large room.

Kylo turned and walked away from the giant projection.

The first half of his master’s imposed fast passed easily; he spent the days alone, training and in meditation, readily ignoring his body’s need for fuel. He hadn’t always had square meals ready to go when he’d been training with his uncle or when he’d been traveling on the Falcon (thinking about his ship still hurt him somewhere deeply, pinging with crystalline pain like a kyber shattering). As much as he hated the lonely silence, he could recognize it was good for him. As though he was with his other Knights, he kept his helmet on as he pushed himself past his usual endurance, and he felt his muscles and mind responding.

By the end of the four days, he was hungry and ate his allowed meal with gusto. Even then, he didn’t let himself go too far. The food was carefully measured out, just enough, eaten slowly and deliberately. Not a thing to be enjoyed, this meal was just a biological necessity. (He remembered cooking noodles that were too spicy and dessert that was too sweet for Arrik Hux.) That night, he slept well, deeply, even while his skin still crawled at the silence of the dead planet beneath him. No matter how much activity was happening, he felt the void like a thrumming in his chest.

The next four days, he told himself when he woke to his early alarm, shouldn’t be any worse. But by the second day, he had a headache as he stood beside Phasma to oversee her Elite’s maneuvers and day three found him stalking the halls without any purpose at all, angry without any reason at all.

Although Hux hasn’t been told, he quickly realized that Kylo had been assigned some kind of crucible of denial. He barely saw Kylo Ren for four days, noticed that his meals weren’t being delivered. He barely spoke to the knight; he had his own prerogatives.

Almost a week later, Phasma mentioned Ren’s short responses and terse behavior, asking if Hux had any knowledge of their cause. Hux was curious, but decided not to interfere; if Ren was undergoing a trial, he would be alerted when it was appropriate. He was sure that an unnecessary interruption would not be taken well.

After the meeting through which he’d stood silently in the back of the room and heard nothing that was being said, Kylo Ren glanced up when one of the petty officers approached him nervously.

“Lord Ren. You’d requested your shuttle be made ready. Unfortunately…” The man swallowed, eyes flicking up to watch the blank mask, his imagination running with what could be underneath. A face as disfigured as Darth Vader’s? A monster that was half metal and half ruined flesh? He hesitated too long.

“Yes?” Kylo Ren prompted him in a harsh tone, one hand tightening by his side. He needed to get off this Force-empty rock even for a few hours. He needed to feel something else. His unseen eyes bored into the increasingly terrified officer.

“Unfortunately,” he repeated, hoping the full sentence would give him strength and, perhaps, protection. “The request has been denied.”

“It wasn’t a request,” Kylo Ren said, the vocoder punctuating his words, giving them the sound of rolling thunder in the distance. The officer didn’t feel that it was distant enough; he stepped back, hoping, perhaps, that he was out of range.

“I’m sorry, Lord Ren, but that’s all I was--”

He didn’t have a chance to finish the sentence as Kylo Force-threw him across the room, where he hit a bank of monitors hard before falling. The sound of the lightsaber humming to life crackled across the planet’s silence in Ren’s head. He ignored the downed officer, who scrambled to pick himself up. The man knelt in stunned horror as the pressure mounted in the room, feeling his ears pop as the Knight spun with his lightsaber and demolished the screen behind him with all of its analytic bars and star maps. He didn’t stop when the glass broke; the lightsaber crashed through the consoles beside it, the smaller screens with their scrolling numbers. There were high pitched alarms shrieking in the room, but their screams were cut short when Kylo Ren chopped through their power source.

The air in the room smelled scorched and chemical when the officer finally managed to gather himself and dart out through the side door, leaving the Knight to demolish everything that blinked, everything with power, everything that gave a read out or made a noise. The officer ran down the halls almost blindly at first, fearing that the dark column of danger and rage they called Kylo Ren would follow him, would drag him back and add pieces of his body to the altar of his anger.

Eventually he came to himself and moved with more purpose, directly to the general’s office. General Hux was the only person on Starkiller who could stop Kylo Ren, the man thought. Or maybe he could protect everyone from him, at least.

Hux looked up sharply as the officer scrambled into his office, without invitation or consideration. He stood up, hands on his desk, was about to demand an explanation when he saw the abject terror in the officer’s eyes.

“It’s Lord Ren, sir,” the officer gasped, gesturing behind himself, “he’s gone mad, destroying everything.”

The general didn’t even bother to respond to the terrified officer, steeling himself and grabbing his coat as he left his office. He reached out to Ren, but all his mental reach found was something impenetrable and dense.

He didn’t have to search very hard, various alarms and holopad notifications pointing him directly towards the errant Knight. The door of the tech room was broken, half open, smoke seeping out of the room. A group of technicians were clustered a few feet away from the entrance and Hux wasn’t sure if he should be disgusted by Ren’s temper or appreciative that none of them were putting themselves directly in front of the raging knight.

He pushed the door open fully, glaring at Ren’s back.

“Enough!”

The room was a mess of melted plastic and sparking, disconnected wires. Kylo stood hunched over slightly, shoulders visibly lifting and falling as he caught his breath. His stance was wide, the jagged edge of his lightsaber spitting down by his leg as he held it down. The rage had dissipated, spent on the equipment around him.

He was so trapped here, in this room, on this planet. The Supreme Leader had wanted him to learn more patience, more restraint, but that’s why he’d come to him in the first place, because he hadn’t wanted to be told that anymore. He wanted to test the outer limits of his power. He didn’t want to be told to wait. He didn’t want to be told ‘enough.’

Kylo Ren turned as though ready to face a new opponent, knees slightly bent.

Hux met his gaze without trepidation, holding himself tightly. He looked over Ren quickly, noted everything, saw his shoulders, the extent of the damage, how ready Ren was for a fight. He took a step back, gesturing. “Come with me.”

It was an order, not a suggestion, and Hux turned, walking purposefully down the hallway.

Kylo let some distance grow between them, but there was never any question of whether he would go or not. He quickly thumbed the lightsaber switch and the plasma blade was swallowed back into the hilt as he strode out of the room, ignoring the flinching tech team by the door. As though he’d waste his time on them now.

Hux’s pace was brisk, but it wasn’t difficult for Kylo to catch up to him as followed the sense of him rather than even watching him. There was residual anger around the general, but it wasn’t like his anger in the past that had been directed at the Knight specifically. He didn’t speak, even though he was curious about where they were going exactly. They’d passed the turnoffs for both the officers’ living quarters and the general’s office.

Hux continued through the base, heading to a small armament room. It was full of blasters and armor, the in-between place where troopers would congregate to suit up for any kind of land battle. Not that there would ever be a need for that, but it never hurt to be so prepared.

He took off his coat and uniform jacket, glancing over at Ren. Hux didn’t say anything, turning to pull down an insulated coat, securing a trooper’s body armor along his forearms. He found a heavy scarf, fastened a belt around his waist and put three blasters in the holsters. The whole process took less than a minute before he stood in front of the entrance, gloved hand on the door’s lock, the wildling snow of Kinath-I falling outside, little wind disturbing its downward path.

“Do I get a five minute head start or shall I have the honor of chasing you down?”

Kylo Ren stared at him for a long minute, taking in this image from half forgotten dreams, seeing the way the armor fit around Hux’s arms as though it was made for him...or he was made to fit into it, like the standard bodies of the clone troopers from so long ago. He registered the blasters next, then his hand on the lock panel.

In a flash, he knew this, Hux’s hair as bright as blood on snow, the rest of him obscured, white on white on white. His own shape a shadow, more terrifying because of how visible he could be when he chose to be.

He walked to the door, waiting to be let out, waiting to be released. “You can try to find me,” he muttered. He set his hand against the door; it vibrated under his energy.

Hux nodded once and without ceremony pressed the door’s lock.

Kylo said nothing else to him, arm brushing against the general as he quickly walked out the door. It was cold, but not bitter; it promised a new snow storm soon, meaning the temperature couldn’t drop too low. He wanted to breathe in air with that sort of crispness to it, but he knew he shouldn’t take his helmet off, especially this close to the command center.

He walked a few steps, then started running when the trees came into view. He wanted to feel it, every part of this, the icy ground under his feet and the cold making it through his clothes, and knowing that Hux was behind him, and closer than he thought. Once he made it to the trees, he changed his course, feeling for the Force moving through them, the life that they still had.

It didn’t take long until Hux couldn’t see Kylo Ren. He closed the door, closed his eyes and waited another few minutes before setting out himself. The snow wasn’t coming down fast enough to completely obscure Kylo’s footprints, and he jogged comfortably until he reached the treeline.

Kylo’s tracks ended abruptly, two massive indents where he had pushed off, using the Force to propel him into the trees.

Hux unholstered his weapon, changing the setting so it was something a little more than stun but not quite lethal. He primed the charge, walking through the trees slowly, looking around. He was the hunter, he was primal, instinct in a tightly coiled frame.

However, the creature he was hunting was a predator, and for all that Kylo Ren was being hunted, he tracked Hux at the same time. He kept himself high, enjoying the challenge of staying quiet and out of range, giving the man on the ground just enough to let him follow him.

The general wasn’t blind, and even if Ren hadn’t been making noise, he would have been able to track him; the Knight had dislodged snow from branches, wasn’t following an unpredictable pattern, he was leading him into the forest, into the parts of Starkiller that were still Kinath-I, grown and tree-laden. He didn’t look up too often, letting himself be led.

Kylo moved (he heard it, he was alert, the hunter, ready) and he moved forwards quickly, around a tree, behind a second, hiding his tracks, removing himself twice from his original place on the ground.

He breathed slowly, heard Kylo, knew him, and he turned quickly, shooting at the knight three times before turning against the tree again, wary of a redirected blast.

Kylo Ren leaned back, flattening himself against the smooth bark of the tree to avoid being shot. He was surprised that they passed so close; he’d been lazy, and too dismissive of Hux’s abilities, which he knew of firsthand.

He smiled to himself behind the helmet and gestured with his right hand, bringing up a little snow flurry in front of Hux while he jumped down and headed in another direction. He pulled out his lightsaber, cutting through several lower branches. He wanted Hux to see those, to remember the danger of playing with him. He knew that the man was still close enough to hear the hum of the blade. Then he pulled himself up into one of the trees again.

The snow obscured Hux’s vision, and he pulled the scarf over his nose and mouth, turning around the tree again. The snow settled and he took a deep breath, moving through the trees carefully, listening. Kylo wasn’t as eager now, moving more carefully. He saw the snow on the ground, fallen from branches, and then the branches themselves, sheared from the trees.

He paused, took a deep breath and looked upwards, trying to determine where Kylo had gone. Hux wasn’t hiding, standing in between trees, slowly, carefully turning around, the scarf falling around his neck, gun up and ready, waiting.

It was impossible to be silent in this place; the rest of the world was too quiet. He could extend his senses to hear the steadiness of Hux’s heartbeat, had he wanted to. But that would make it too easy; he wanted to draw him in while they tested one another. Moving as quietly as he could, he led him deeper into the wooded area, where there were huge boulders thrust up from the ground and showing black against the snow.

He doubled back, moving carefully and quietly at first until he had moved past Hux’s position. Then he let himself jump quickly through branches, finally returning to the ground as he headed for a clearing.

Hux took slow, deep breaths, turning around slowly, eyes up. He thought he heard something and he turned quickly, shooting at nothing. He blinked and then heard it again, and he set off, following Ren into the open area.

Kylo smiled when he heard the distant shots; his ruse had worked and his grin was feral where it was hidden. He kept to the edge of the clearing, using the taller rocks as shields. Creeping to the far side of the oblong ring, he waited with his lightsaber hilt in his hand, thumb near the switch.

The general turned slowly, thought he saw a shadow and continued to turn, watching the cracks in between the low boulders. His thoughts jumped suddenly to the boulders on Arkanis, the uprooted garden, the destroyed terrace. It was something beautiful and thrilling, and he felt the desire stick in his throat.

Kylo felt the desire as well, hand tightening on the hilt he held against his thigh as he crouched slightly, unable to see Hux from behind the rock, but able to feel him, hear him. He wanted to watch him, suddenly, to see the hunter’s calm in his pale eyes, knowing the slight tensing of the muscles in his jaw would be the only thing to give him away. He moved his free hand and the bare branches above their heads rustled against one another.

«Come find me.» They weren’t words so much as a calling, a taunt, an invitation. To the game, to danger, to bed. Hux had been right; this was what he’d needed.

At the rustling branches Hux turned quickly, eyes darting upwards before turning towards Kylo’s hiding place. He didn’t know, he just had a feeling, something in the pit of his stomach. He continued to stare at the boulders, walking to the edge of the clearing, gun up. He moved forward again, going slowly, and as soon as he spotted Kylo he shot at him, five times in quick succession.

The crimson glow of the lightsaber was reflected against the undisturbed snow beneath him; Kylo Ren felt, strangely, as though he was the first sentient who’d ever walked here. He deflected the shots, careful not to aim them back directly at the general, but he knew that Hux knew it was intentional. That he was playing with him.

He wanted Hux to make it more dangerous. There was nothing in Kylo Ren that was afraid; this far away from the base, this deep in the snow and the silence, he felt powerful, a deity in a dead land.

The Knight gestured with his fingers.

“Well, come on. Hunter.” «Hunter.» He whispered it into Hux’s mind, letting the letters flow slowly between them.

Hux bared his teeth, the chill rattling his jaw, and he drew his second weapon. Both were set at non-lethal charges, but it wasn’t as if Ren would be able to tell. Hux wasn’t particularly worried about hitting the Knight, he was much more concerned about a deflected shot to his chest. He wasn’t sure how benevolent Kylo was feeling at any moment.

He ran forward, crouched behind a boulder, turned and used it as a shield, shooting at Ren with both guns.

Kylo jumped up onto one of the rocks, ducking away from the shots and sending them away from himself with the lightsaber, meeting each bolt with a sure swing. Even though it always fought him slightly, he knew how to compensate, and the lightsaber was still an extension of him, of the way he used the Force. It arced in a jagged flashed, sending one of the bolts careening into the thing, brittle trunk of one of the trees near them. The tree crashed down, its base destroyed by the blast.

Hux ducked, covering his head with his braced forearms, sliding in between two of the boulders to protect from the branches that rained down as the trunk crashed only a few feet away. He took quick, short breaths, shaking off the snow that fell, and pulled himself up onto the trunk. Hux knew where Ren was, and immediately turning to face him, setting his feet on the boulders, pausing for barely a second before he jumped towards him, across the boulders, letting off precise blasts.

Kylo held his ground, deflecting those shots before making an impossible jump across the ring of unevenly spaced stones. He turned to meet another volley, feeling it through the Force when Hux turned to fire at him again. This was different from the training room, from the quiet sterility of those sessions. As intense as they’d felt at the time, they paled to this, to this actual hunt, to seeing in Hux’s eyes what those who’d fallen to his shots on rebelling planets, conquered moons, had seen. And he himself faced the other man as the dark killer he was known as by everyone in the galaxy who’d never known his face and had only ever seen this mask.

Hux slid on the icy surface of one of the boulders, falling to his knees on the ground, ignoring the shots of pain through his legs. He couldn’t risk dropping his weapons, and he felt as if the plasma blasts were the only things keeping Kylo back.

“Run, then!”

The sight of the general on his knees in the snow brought that feral smile to Kylo’s face again. He almost lazily turned the lightsaber by his side, watching the snow evaporate on contact with the blade from the corner of his eye. Without advancing or retreating, he raised his hand and dragged Hux to his feet with the Force. After a long moment, he walked toward Hux, lightsaber still humming by his side. He stood in front of the general and just watched his face, how furious he was to be held there.

“Run?”

The officer struggled against the invisible bonds, hair falling into his face. He was livid, he felt powerless (he was powerless like this) and he pulled at his arms, trying to bring up the gun, wanting to press it into Ren’s side, against his chest, his shoulder. Hux couldn’t even speak as he resisted, his jaw set, his knees locked.

The tension in Hux’s body resonated back through the Force to Kylo Ren and he let himself just enjoy it. He held him for a minute more before exerted his power again to push the other man against the trunk of a tree just behind him, hearing the soft exhalation when his breath was knocked out of him by the impact. The Knight brought his gloved hand up to Hux’s face, trailing his fingers down over his features, down past his eyes, over his mouth, letting his fingertips pull Hux’s bottom lip down a bit.

“Maybe you should run,” he suggested maliciously, hand sliding down to wrap around the general’s throat. His thumb caressed the side of his neck before he squeezed lightly, watching Hux’s eyes.

Hux glared at Kylo, barely able to tilt his head up, letting Ren press against his throat. Anger, annoyance, eagerness, something rage-filled and wanting in his eyes, but not a trace of fear. He managed to squeeze the trigger on one of the guns, the blast searing a small patch of earth by their feet. A challenge.

«I should skin you.»

Kylo Ren’s laugh was low as it bubbled through the vocoder, distorted and deep.

“You’d have to control me first. Hold me down first. Kill me first.” He let his hand tighten on Hux’s neck, smelling the scorched earth below them. He wanted to taste his mouth, wanted blood on it. He clipped his lightsaber to his belt and grabbed Hux’s wrist, shoving his gun hand down as he turned the man face-first to the tree, pushing his cheek against the bark as he released him with the Force and just held him with his own strength.

Hux pushed back against Ren, pressing against him. This was a rough place to be fucked, and Hux didn’t come out here to rut in the woods.

“Do you want a hunt or not, Ren?” he hissed, trying to turn his shoulders to get a better view of the taller man.

Kylo pressed his hips forward against the general’s ass, shoving his face harder against the tree trunk.

“I do...I do.” He wanted to bite the back of his neck hard enough to make him bleed. Instead, he shoved him down past the tree, scraping his cheekbone on his way down to his knees in the snow. Before Hux could gather himself, Kylo Ren had already turned away and was gone, leaving the man alone in the clearing.

Hux turned on his knees, ignoring the searing pain on his face. He had his weapon up but Kylo was not darkening his vision, there was only white and gray. Taking a deep breath, he pressed his back against the tree again, pausing for a minute, closing his eyes, focusing on the thrumming string that tied his being to Kylo’s.

Centering himself, Hux opened his eyes, checked the charges on his guns and found the path forward. He nodded and ran forwards, following the small trail markers that Kylo had left behind, unwittingly or on purpose.

Kylo felt Hux moving behind him, and he led him into the trees again. The sky was darkening slightly overhead, the grey turning deeper and making the snow seem thicker as it fell. It was good to feel the general’s resolve, his anger; it fed into Kylo’s own, into the darkness of the Force that he was calling on to jump higher, to run faster.

He wanted to face him again, to see his lightsaber a streak of light in the oncoming night. He wanted to see the red reflection in Hux’s eyes. The landscape around him grew rocky again and he darted by a formation that almost seemed manmade. Behind it, the snow spread out before him, unmarred by life or destruction.

Hux followed quickly, silently. He spotted Kylo, and it was an instinct at this point, he raised both guns and shot them at the man’s back. The general barely took a breath before he slammed his back against the tree, turning away from the Knight. It would be hard to tell where exactly Hux was, but he knew that Kylo would be better than most at guessing.

Tilting his head, he took another deep breath and took a quick step away from the tree, turning to shoot at Kylo again.

The moment after deflecting the shots to protect himself was intense, and Kylo Ren turned before he’d even inhaled again. He made an abortive sound when he realized that his swing would carry him too far; he’d let himself fall into the dark side of the Force, and it wanted blood on snow. He felt the impact even as he pulled himself back, fighting the momentum and the juddering power of the blade in his hand as the tip of it caught Hux’s unprotected front.

He had no way of knowing how deeply he’d cut; the plasma blade cut through flesh and bone as easily as it cut through fabric. He dimly heard the hilt fall to the ground a second before his knees did as he grabbed for Hux’s body.

“Arrik!” He frantically reached up to hit the lock switch on his helmet, ripping it off his head and tossing it to the side so he could look at the limp man he was balancing in one arm. It was dark and quiet around them and his hands were shaking as he pulled Hux’s scarf away from his face. Everything was dead on this planet and he felt the cold seeping into him, chilling his bones where he knelt, hand against Hux’s slack cheek. He could smell the burned flesh and he almost gagged on his panic and fear. “Arrik!”

Hux was going into shock. The muscles had been seared apart, it hurt to breath, it hurt to move his arms, it hurt more than even Snoke’s Force torture had hurt. This was such a different pain.

His eyelashes fluttered, closed and then his eyes opened, he turned to look up at Kylo’s mask...no, his face. Arrik’s face was pale, mouth bloodless, and he couldn’t form words, couldn’t even think along their connection, waves of pain threatening to overtake him.

He swallowed, let Kylo move him, and then fell unconscious, a long black line of charred flesh extending from navel to jugular notch. Kylo Ren pulled him completely into his arms, standing with him and making an anguished sound when he felt the heaviness of him, the emptiness of his limbs. Leaving his lightsaber in the snow, he turned to make his way back to the base, feeling the loss of light all around him.


	4. Chapter 4

Kylo Ren knew there wasn’t going to be any change in Hux’s condition, even if he stood there watching for the slightest movement. Even if he knelt on the floor in his room and tried to meditate. There was nothing he could do to make the healing process slower or faster. He’d heard it too many times to count now. That it was beyond lucky that Star Killer base had a bacta tank, when so few First Order facilities did. How five more minutes could have made the difference between life and death.

He didn’t need to be told, and he hated that he could hear the same things from the mouths and minds of everyone around him. He knew how close to death Arrik had been. He’d felt it, when their machines and monitors hadn’t even registered it yet. He’d felt it as he’d felt it kneeling on the floor before Supreme Leader Snoke so long ago, when he’d refused his new master and Hux had died then, for a flicker of a moment. There had been a moment when Arrik Hux had not existed in this universe.

He’d felt it again after he’d brought him in, and it was only the numbness that followed the second of rage and guilt screaming inside him that kept him from destroying everything.

When Hux was stable, he’d gone out into the dark, icy night to retrieve his lightsaber and helmet. The helmet was frigid when he put it on; the cold radiating off it made his cheekbones and teeth and the ridge over his eyes ache. He deserved worse than the crown of pain it gave him. He held out his hand and the lightsaber flew into it, the hilt solid against his palm. He felt the cracked crystal screaming, bleeding, and he felt it inside himself as well. His muscles remembered it more than his eyes or mind did-- the rising flash of red, the sensation of striking something living, of knowing it was Arrik. Arrik, with his chest torn open. There should have been more blood, but Kylo knew there never was. He’d killed enough with his weapon to know that.

Several rotations later, he was aware of Phasma keeping his silent vigil beside him. She stood by the door, immoveable and chrome, while he knelt on the floor beside the tank where Hux floated, insensate. It was impossible that she didn’t know he’d caused the injury; after Hux, she was the highest ranking officer on the base, and there were no secrets from her here. He didn’t raise his head, even when she finally shifted.

“Why did you do it?” she asked, not turning her head away from the bacta readouts.

Kylo didn’t care enough to try to read the emotions behind her question. Her voice was even, but the words held censure, the implied intent that must have been behind the blow. He was the leader of the Knights of Ren; he didn’t strike without aim and purpose. He didn’t raise his head or move his hands from where they were laid on his thighs.

“He was closer than I’d thought,” he said quietly, his vocoder hiding any of his emotions. The words had come out half-considered. It was the literal truth - he hadn’t thought Hux would turn toward him, he’d figured he would go around the tree the other way to fire - but also something much deeper. Arrik Hux was closer to him than any other person, and if there was one thing he’d learned it was that he was a very difficult person to remain close to. He was wildfire, he was an avalanche, he was a volcano. He was the weapon they were building below him. A shiver ran up his back and he pressed his mouth to keep down the bile in his throat. He was a creature of horror.

She shifted, but didn’t respond for a few seconds, turning her helmet away from Kylo’s, looking at the tank where Hux floated. It was an inadequate explanation, and she considered her next response carefully.

“He will wake up soon.”

Phasma turned and left, leaving Kylo alone in the recovery room.

There was no such thing as soon, Kylo would have told her. It had been something he’d said as a child, Ben Solo had said as a child. There was now or there was never; being told soon meant nothing. He glanced up at the readout monitor by the tank. Now or never. Arrik was suspended in never.

The muscles along Arrik’s chest and torso were slowly healing, stitching themselves back together. His sternum had almost been cut in two, his collarbones nearly caved in. The bacta wasn’t perfect, even submerged for three days, the long scar that almost split him in two remained a bright red against his pale skin. A burn, after so many years without burning.

Kylo knew that the brightness would fade. It would become something angry and dark, purple and raised.

Hux turned in the bacta tank and blinked, waking up. Cold, again. He hated the cold. An alarm went off and he looked upwards, focusing on the green light. Slowly he was lowered to the ground, the bacta sliding off him, sliding down the drain. Pressing his hand over his chest, he felt the scar just under his collarbones. Strangely his first thought was that he was grateful a uniform would hide it.

There was a person who was more like a dark feeling than a body, and Hux looked up to see a warped version of Kylo’s helmet through the glass. He felt annoyance, and leaned back against the wall, pulling at the masks and tubes, gagging and coughing as the bacta pooled around his ankles.

He took deep breaths, closing his eyes, leaning against the wall as the glass slid down, exposing him to the warmed air. Droids immediately came up to him, propping him up, pressing nodes to his chest. Despite the suspended sleep, he felt incredibly tired.

«If I see that mask again, I’m going to break it.»

Kylo Ren watched him wordlessly, then stepped back as the med droids and medics stepped forward to wrap the general in blankets and help him to a recovery bed. Hux had become now, and the enormity of his survival swelled in the Knight’s chest until he couldn’t breathe. He nodded sharply to him, hands in tight fists by his sides, then turned to leave the med bay. The medics’ conversation buzzed like the sounds of insects after him.

Hux would live, would thrive, was fine. He would sleep ten hours and wake feeling rested, restored by the bacta and the time away from the galaxy. Kylo sat on the edge of his bed and stared at the wall, gut churning with guilt. It wasn’t an emotion he was used to anymore and he didn’t know how to process it. Eventually, with nothing else to do, he fell asleep as well, the effigy of Kylo Ren on the narrow bed, boots and helmet on, gloved hands limp by his sides.

By the time clean hands and droids had pulled Hux to the bed Ren was gone, it was as if he had never been in the room at all. Hux didn’t protest as his vitals were checked and temperature monitored every other minute. He allowed them to give him a sedative, but demanded that he be in his own rooms.

He found a uniform and struggled to put it on, but he eventually dragged himself through the base, opening the doors to his quarters and dropping onto the bed. He had so much to do, the end of the Republic was imminent. He couldn’t allow something like this to stop him.

Hux hadn’t even quite processed what ‘this’ was, recalling vague images as he fell asleep again. It seemed like a burst of light, but he couldn’t quite understand it.

Waking up the next morning, he was sore and tired in a way that seemed to be in his bones themselves. Hux had just been through an intense healing, it made sense that he was this bent out of shape. Nevertheless, he had a job to do, and dressed for the morning, picked up a holopad and began to sort through his messages, going to his office.

Hux remembered more after a full night’s rest. Remembered the hunt and the weapon Kylo turned on him, as if he had meant to kill him after all.

Even when he received the update to his room that General Hux had returned to duty, Kylo Ren didn’t seek him out. The memory Arrik’s thick, exhausted voice in his head reminded him that all he had to offer was the mask now. It made him sick to his stomach, and it wasn’t just the shame of having misjudged, the touched pride of having made a mistake.

It was that flickering followed by the nothing of Hux’s life that he’d felt in that space between them, that thin, taut wire between them. He’d killed many times, but the sense of loss he felt now dampened any bloodlust he’d enjoyed while out in the field. He couldn’t meditate, never a strength for him anyway, so he headed to one of the open training rooms. The lightsaber remained clipped to his belt as he pushed himself through strength and stretching exercises, working to exhaust himself in the hope that his mind would stop replaying what it had felt like in the Force when Arrik’s heart had stopped.

He stopped when he heard the wall comm unit beeping insistently; the message was obviously for him, as Star Killer’s ridiculous regulations meant he’d had to log into the room when he’d arrived. Breathing hard and hating how it sounded inside his helmet, he walked over to see who wanted him. He could feel the sweat dripping down his spine, dampening his clothes.

_Report to my office immediately. - A. Hux._

Kylo took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. Right. It wasn’t worth making the man send the message twice, and it wasn’t worth replying. He simply left the training room and headed down through the halls to Hux’s office, nearly knocking down several stormtroopers on patrol.

He didn’t bother with the door buzzer either. Hux knew he was coming, and he couldn’t stand to be admitted like a child or underling.

Glancing up at Ren, Hux made a small gesture.

“Lock the door.”

Kylo’s eyebrows rose slightly behind the faceplate of his helmet, but he tapped the panel beside the door before walking closer to the man’s desk. He was looking him over carefully, his pallor that was more extreme than usual but not the bloodless color his face had been under the harsh medbay lights when he’d brought him back into the base. He held himself stiffly, but whether that was residual injury or just Hux was always hard to tell.

Hux shifted in his seat, frowning. He put aside a datapad and made a low noise in the back of his throat. “Take off your helmet.”

For one of the first times in the past year, Kylo Ren found he didn’t want to. He wanted the blank front of it to be the only thing Hux could see because he knew his own face would never be the mask the general was able to make of his. He licked his lips as he reached up to unlock it, ducking his head as he pulled it off. The chilly air of Hux’s office hit the sweat on his face immediately, turning him cold as he raised his chin to watch the other man.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?” Hux asked, frowning deeply.

“You know I’m sorry,” Kylo said quietly, meeting his eyes and then just barely shifting his glance away. “It was an accident. I’m relieved to see you so recovered.”

It felt like an excuse, like a slap to the face. Hux set his jaw, angry and annoyed. He had nearly died, and it was an ‘accident’? That was all Kylo had to say to him? Hux wanted more, wanted some kind of feeling from Kylo Ren. The Knight had not descended so far that he couldn’t show more than some small contrite apology.

“I would like to hear something more sincere, Ren.” His tone was cold anger, something that betrayed only some of the hurt he felt. The accident he could forgive, despite the delays that it had caused, despite the inconvenience and the pain. Accidents happened, it was Kylo’s reaction that stung.

Kylo’s mouth pressed tightly as the muscles in his jaw worked. He stood stiffly, not trusting himself to say anything or raise his head. How many times had he been passed from hand to hand because he’d gotten to difficult, too dangerous? The guilt was rising again and it pushed everything else out of him. Loss and near loss hurt so much that he could scarcely breathe now, the fabric of his tunic seeming too heavy for his chest to move when he inhaled.

He blinked as he raised his head, surprised when his eyelashes felt wet when he opened his eyes again. There were hairline cracks in the walls around his mind and emotions that were too intense were managing to escape, emotions that should have been below him. Guilt, affection, the fear that he’d destroyed the only person in the galaxy who might have understood and protected him, the images and sensations of that moment, over and over again.

Swallowing, he held Hux’s eyes for another second before looking away.

“I am…” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “I am sorry. I can’t stop feeling it.”

Hux’s eyes widened slowly, and along their connection he felt it, the intensity of Ren’s regret, the unsaid things, the importance of this immediate response. He stood up slowly, feeling a twinge of pain but ignoring it, knowing that it was a passing inconvenience. Walking around the desk, Hux pulled off his gloves, setting them on the cold steel.

“You burned me,” he murmured, standing in front of Ren, looking into his face, seeing the raw emotions there, the depths of feeling he hadn’t realized existed. “And you said no one ever would.”

He spoke quietly, almost encouraging. Hux put a hand in Ren’s hair, taking a few steps back, leading him until the backs of his knees hit a chair. Letting go of Ren, he sat down, spreading his legs, taking a sharp breath as the muscles in his sides and back shifted around the new-formed scar tissue, the healed muscles along his chest.

Kylo stood with his shoulders slumped as he looked down at him, at all of him, the lean strength of his thighs, the way his back never quite relaxed. He’d wounded him nearly to death, but this man wouldn’t die. Even at his hand, this man hadn’t succumbed, and would still touch him, would still want him here. Right here. Through their connection, he could feel the exact place of the wound, the perfect killing blow if he hadn’t managed to pull back a bit, to restrain himself and only strike with some of his anger and some of his power. He could feel the strain on the muscles, even knowing that would be gone in a few days. Bacta was nearly a miracle substance, and he’d never been so grateful.

He knew that he himself still wasn’t anywhere near the knowledge of how to prevent death or bring someone back from the brink of it even. This was all he had.

There was no forethought or consideration; he was just suddenly on his knees before the general. He hadn’t knelt like this in quite some time, and he kept his hands down at his sides. Touching wasn’t something he had the right to do at present.

“I would never have let anyone else hurt you,” he said finally. “I hadn’t intended to mark you for life.”

Hux shifted to get more comfortable, gestured slightly. Across their strengthening connection he sent something like acceptance, not quite forgiveness. He wanted Kylo’s head against the inside of his thigh, he wanted his hand in the knight’s hair.

«Closer,» he whispered, watching Ren’s shoulders.

Kylo Ren swallowed, then licked his bottom lip as he moved closer, until he was in the spread of Hux’s thighs. He sat back on his heels and looked up, eyes still a little glossy with tears that hadn’t made it down his face. Hux’s mortality made him more dedicated to making him immortal. There were certain lives that shouldn’t be extinguished, even if the rest of the galaxy went up in flames, was reduced to floating clouds of stardust.

Hux slid his hand into Kylo’s hair, pulling him towards his leg. The feelings that he saw, that he heard and felt in tandem with the Knight were enough, it was enough. He ran his hand through Ren’s hair again, closing his eyes. Taking a deep breath, Hux sent across softer emotions, almost kindness, something forgiving and restful.

It came from a place of understanding, acceptance, realization. He understood Ren, deeply, immediately, without pretence. Hux had only wanted acknowledgment, something that assured him of his place.

«Stay close today.»

Something pulled at the corner of Kylo’s mouth, something that almost felt like a smile. There was a weight lifted off him, the blurriness in his eyes cleared. He knew his place as well.

“This close?”

Hux hummed, moving his thumb steadily, slowly across Kylo’s skull. “This close.”

The Knight allowed himself to close his eyes, let his head lean against Hux’s thigh and feel the warmth of his body through the uniform. The temptation was there to let his cheek roll against his leg, shifting forward until his mouth was against his inner thigh, knowing how pale and soft the skin was there. He wanted to bite down as hard as he could, through the fabric, through the flesh (a dark side temptation of desire fueled only by self-pleasure), but he fought it down with little difficulty. He’d caused enough damage and Hux had had pain enough from him for now. Now was the time to stay where he was and learn from what he’d done.

Unbidden, his uncle’s voice floated back to him from memories he’d thought he’d managed to destroy. _Regret and pain are unavoidable parts of life, Ben. No matter how we strive, we all of us make mistakes. The important parts of all of this are the lessons we learn, the reparations we make, and the release of those emotions into the Force._

He took a deep breath, smelling the recycled air of the room, the hyper clean scent of Hux’s soap, his own sweat. When he exhaled, he visualized it, the pain and guilt moving away from him, pulled into the great moving streams of the Force that was always around him. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this, but he was. Feeling like this should have meant he was tempted to go home, but he wasn’t.

After a while, Hux sighed, shifted again, sitting up in the chair. He slid back, his knee against Ren’s cheek, and leaned down, putting a hand on the side of his head.

“I have more work to do,” he murmured quietly, standing up, pushing the chair back. He walked around Ren’s kneeling form, sitting down at his desk. The pain wasn’t bad, just a twinge, and he pushed it down as he began to read notes on the holopads.

Kylo Ren lifted his head to watch Hux walk. There was a notable lack of tension in the room and he took a deep breath as he got to his feet. He left the helmet where he’d dropped it; it was as much marked by his careless treatment of it as it was by dents and scorches from battle. Glancing out the giant windows behind Hux’s desk, he surveyed the snowy landscape. It all looked the same. He couldn’t have guessed the direction of their fight, and the daily snows would have obscured all signs of it, both the enjoyable, passionate hunt and the almost irreparable ending.

He walked behind the desk to look at Hux’s screens.

“What is this?” he asked curiously, looking at the dates and star maps.

“We have two days to finish preparing the weapon.” Hux didn’t look up from the holopad. “We’re making sure that Star Killer will be properly aligned with the sun.”

“Two days,” Kylo repeated, feeling a little stab of panic he hardly recognized. “And the target?” As if he didn’t already know, as if asking would make the answer different. As if the answer hadn’t sent him out into the snow the first time he’d heard it, as if it hadn’t left him crushed and broken against the whiteness as Hux had been.

He set his hand against the back of the general’s head, smoothing his palm against the curve of his skull before sliding it down to the vulnerable back of his neck.

“Closer to a day and a half,” Hux said quietly, frowning slightly. He took a deep breath as Kylo held the back of his head. “We are aimed at Hosnian Prime.”

The room was silent for a moment, the snow falling behind them without sound. The Knight’s hand was still then he began slowly caressing Hux’s head, barely disturbing his carefully styled hair.

“Are you ready?” he asked, voice just as soft as Hux’s had been.

“Yes.” It was impossible for him to be anything but. He was prepared, he was thrilled, the thought of bringing an end to the senate was the beginning of the end of the Republic, it was the beginning of the First Order as the leading power in the universe.

It was everything he had dreamed about for years. It would not be the pinnacle of his success, just the start of it.

Kylo leaned down, feeling the purpose and devotion as a tiny series of vibrations in the Force, through their connection. He kissed Hux’s temple, then his ear. He couldn’t take this away from Arrik.

“Just be sure of it,” he said, still close to him.

Hux made a noise, turning up to look at him. He shifted a little, reached up to pull Ren down, kissing him. He let go, blue eyes half-lidded as he looked over the Knight’s face. He nodded.

“I’m sure.”

Kylo straightened again, looking over the glowing lines of the star charts, the orbit of planets he’d spent time on as a child, the trajectory of the weapon that could, and would, destroy them.  
He touched the cheek of the man who was going to do it, the man who would sift the dust of worlds between his fingers if those chose not to bow down.

Hux kept Kylo close the rest of the day; when he went to meetings, Kylo Ren followed like a second shadow. He took his meals in his office, only ordering enough for one. Hux responded to messages on his datapad in the larger chair, facing the tundra of Kinath-I, Ren kneeling by his side, in the kind of meditation that made the code cylinders on his desk shake.

In the evening Hux finally decided that he had worked enough, at least for the day. He stood up from his chair, putting his hands on the desk, closing his eyes for a second as he felt the blood rush to his head. He knew that this would all pass, willing the headache down.

He took a deep breath and glanced over at Ren. «I’m turning in.»

Kylo had felt the general stand, though he hadn’t raised his head. He opened his eyes, letting the readout in his helmet tell him about the room, passively taking the information.

«I’m surprised you weren’t asleep in the chair,» he commented mildly. «Those sedatives don’t give up easily.»

«You should know by now that I like sleeping in a bed.» Hux took a deep breath and gestured as he walked to the door. «Make sure I don’t fall on the way to my berth.»

Kylo stood smoothly, as though the hours spent on his knees had been easy and comfortable. He walked over to join the general, letting him walk through the doors first but then walking beside him in the hallway. Hux looked exhausted now; having had his own major injuries to recover from in the past (though nothing like this, nothing like being opened to the bone by a plasma blade), he knew how they lingered, and how men as driven as the general ignored every word of medical advice given. Grabbing his helmet from its place on the desk, he put it on as they walked out.

He walked with him in silence, listening to the sound of their boots on the floor. His own strides were longer, steps heavier when his soles hit the ground. Hux’s steps were shorter and almost struck the floor, a sharp, military walk, with each step being almost too even, too perfectly timed. Kylo wondered if he was counting them, measuring them, making sure that he didn’t falter or stumble. Kylo felt his exhaustion weighing by the time they got to the door; he reached over to take the cylinder code from Hux’s jacket pocket and opened the door for him, then waited for Hux to walk into the suite first.

Hux sent something like a thank you along their connection, going into the suite and immediately loosening his jacket’s collar. He was beyond exhausted. Glancing over at Ren he nodded once before going further into his suite, towards the large washroom, intent on taking a scalding shower before he collapsed.

«Stay here.»

It was a command and a request-- Kylo Ren took it as both. He nodded to the back of Hux’s head, then walked to stand by the bedroom door. A dark and unnecessary sentinel, he waited while he heard the sound of the door closing, then the water turning on in a rush.

After the shower, Hux had to apply a bacta rub to the long, dark scar. It left behind an herbal smell, something earthy that reminded him of the Arkanis hanging plants. He ignored his reflection and walked out of the washroom, only a towel around his waist. Going further into his bedroom, he was a little surprised to see Ren so attentive to his guard.

“You can come in,” his tone was almost teasing as he turned away from Ren, going over to his closet and pulling out issued sleepwear.

Kylo caught a glimpse of the scar, or rather, the light in the room caught on the slick medicinal salve Hux must have put over it after he was clean. Without saying anything, he turned to follow Hux back into his bedroom. The man’s back was unmarked, only sporting the older scars and freckles that never saw the sun. From the back, it was easy to pretend that nothing had happened.

He stood just inside the door, knowing how to place himself so the overhead lights missed him and left him in darkness. He was still wearing his helmet, as though waiting for permission to remove it.

Hux glanced over at him again, eyebrows up. He shook his head, going back to the bed, throwing the clothes down.

“Are you going to sleep in that helmet?”

“I don’t usually.” The invitation was implicit, but Kylo didn’t know if he could just assume. He’d assumed Hux would turn left when he’d turned right. Regardless, the tone was clear. He needed to take the helmet off. He remembered Hux’s voice again. _I never want to see that mask ever again._

He unlatched and pulled the helmet off quickly, pausing to run one hand through his hair. He was mostly used to its cropped length, though it had already grown shaggy from Hux’s fit of petty rage with a pair of scissors. Rather than just dropping it, he set it down on the low table by the door before looking over at Hux again. He wanted to touch him, wanted to grab him and turn him around so he could see what he’d done to him. There would be a little more healing, and scars always faded in time, but this was what he’d left him with. He needed to see.

«Come on then,» Hux whispered over their connection, pulling on his basics and turning to look over at Ren. He faced him fully, the too-large scar on display. «Take a look.»

Kylo’s eyes widened slightly; he had forgotten their open connection, that he hadn’t put up those walls between them again. It had felt comfortable and familiar, and he’d just let it remain as though it was the natural way for them.

The scar was smooth, the result of a weapon that was archaic and powerful. A clean cut, really, cauterized immediately by the intensity of the blade. He knew the slant of it already, the downswept diagonal line that he’d studied the entire time Hux had been recovering in the bacta tank. It was large, so large; he felt as though his eyes couldn’t take the whole thing in at once.

He stepped closer to Hux, gloved hand reaching for him though he stayed slightly out of reach. He had already apologized; he didn’t know what to say.

Hux closed the distance, taking a step forward and taking Ren’s wrist almost roughly. He pulled off Ren’s glove, his face hard, gaze flicking from Ren’s hand to his face. Without hesitating he pressed Ren’s hand against his chest, over the tender flesh of the still-healing scar.

«Didn’t you want this?» This and more than this, how often had their whispers turned to marking each other? Bites that turned to bruises, hard hands leaving imprints on hips and wrists. How often did they say they would hurt, hunt, kill. What had happened was so perverted from their original desires, but wasn’t this something Ren had dreamed of in dark nights?

Kylo exhaled shudderingly when his fingers touched Hux’s skin, the new, pale healing skin that was soft under his fingers. He had dreamed about it, fantasized about hurting Hux to the point of true injury, to the point of unconsciousness, of blood, of wordless moans of pain. But this...this wasn’t what he’d ever intended, yet something in it stirred him, both sides of him. There was the darkness, pushing him to press too hard, to lean down to taste the scar and know the texture with his mouth. But the light had returned to keep his touch gentle, to make him prize the fact that a heart was still beating beneath the healing skin.

Inside him, the two sides tore at one another as they had before, the way they had during sleepless nights when he felt himself the most alone in the galaxy.

“I did this,” he said, a confirmation, a confession, the voice of an artist.

Hux nodded, keeping his hand pressed over Kylo’s. He took a deep breath and squeezed Kylo’s wrist. He wanted to encourage this feeling, this depth, the desire and want, the guilt and devotion.

He shifted slightly, wrapping his hand in Kylo’s long robe. «I’m falling asleep,» he murmured, taking a step back, pulling Kylo back with him.

The Knight let himself be pulled, let everything be Hux’s choice. The fact that he was here, forgiven and desired, all of that was set by Hux. It wasn’t that Kylo Ren felt that he had no power here; the evidence of his strength and the damage he could do was right in front of him, written on Hux’s body.

It wasn’t that he’d never stayed the night before; it was that he’d never actually been invited. It had been a case of exhaustion previously, their rough energy finally spent and resolving itself into messy, tangled sleep.

Now he went with him, pulled forward by the slightest, lightest touch, as soft as the quiet admission in his head. Keeping his eyes on Hux’s face, Kylo moved to sit on the edge of the bed, then leaned down to pull his heavy boots off.

Usually Hux would have put on a shirt, extra layers, but he went under the covers as he was, sleepily watching Ren’s back. He blinked, allowed himself to feel something kind and soft, and reached over, trailing his fingers along the unhemmed fabric of Ren’s clothing.

As Hux touched each piece of clothing, Kylo removed it and dropped it to the floor beside the bed. Down to his basics as well, he pulled the covers back enough to slide in beside Hux, feeling the warmth the sheets had already gained from the other man’s body.

“Will you sleep easily?” he asked quietly as he slid closer, one hand already reaching to close on Hux’s waist. “There are painkillers you could take.”

Hux shifted, putting his arm over Kylo, fingers barely brushing his back. This was far more intimate than he had expected, but he had invited the man to share his bed, to sleep with no intention of sex or pleasure, only rest.

“The bacta numbs the pain,” Hux murmured, taking a deep breath and closing his eyes. “It doesn’t do much for the senses. I’m exhausted enough on my own.”

“How close can I get to you?” Kylo Ren asked, a practical question for the night, a question that caught strangely in his throat.

“As close as you’d like.” Arrik’s tone was half amused, half uncaring. “Just stop talking.”

Actually obeying for once, Kylo said nothing as he shifted in the bed. He wrapped his arm around Hux completely, hand sliding over his side and up his bare back, following the indentation of his spine. He pulled the general closer to him, possessive and protective, exhaling only when the man was flush against his front.

Arrik made a noise in the back of his throat, but didn’t protest, shifting limbs to get comfortable against Kylo. He took a deep breath, sighed through his nose and fell asleep quickly, his healing body unable to let him stay awake.

Kylo held him even after he felt him fall asleep, as though reminding himself that even sleep meant he was still alive. He held Arrik for an hour before he allowed himself to finally sleep, arms still closed around him.

* * *

 

Kylo had to dig through piles of laundry, after finding the actual laundry facilities, before he could find anything that would remotely fit him and suit his purpose. He was relieved and surprised that no one turned the corner to see the Lord of the Knights of Ren in his black robe and helmet desperately trying to find something that approximated...what? Someone he wasn’t.

While he’d slept like the dead, Hux had woken early and had seemed like someone who hadn’t been nearly gutted a few days before. There was a slight stiffness to his movements that eased after his morning time in the refresher (though Kylo could still see it, even after he was in his uniform), and while the Knight knew the general was heading to his office a full hour later than his regular shift started, it was still impressive and spoke of the man’s unstoppable drive.

Which was why it was important that he found a shirt that would accommodate his shoulders that didn’t have the First Order insignia anywhere on it.

He was also relieved that the general had gone back to work. That gave him a little time. Stolen clothes balled up in his hand, he headed down to one of the work rooms, closing the doors behind him with an almost absent gesture. The area was empty, devoid of the droids who maintained the space at night. He pulled the helmet off and shook his head as he set it down, then hurriedly changed into the clothes he’d taken. A black shirt with a loose asymmetrical flap over the front, a utility sort of vest, and a bandana. He ultimately didn’t know what to do with that, so he tossed it onto the stack of black, ragged cloth that made up his usual clothes before sitting down in front of the comm console.

Kylo Ren took one more look at the closed door before looking down to type several things into the comm. First to mask himself from the base, next to mask himself from the place he was contacting, and lastly, his call signal in to Hosnian Prime.

Ben Solo took a deep breath and sent a quick prayer into the Force that his mother would answer, though he had no idea what time of day it was in the stronghold of the Senate.

When Leia Organa flickered onto the screen she was incredibly surprised and looked rather less formal than she would if she were attending the senate. She leaned into the holoscreen, staring wide-eyed at the image of her son before her.

“Ben.” She sounded worried, upset, not at all like a mother excited to see her child. “We haven’t heard from you in months.”

He hadn’t expected it to feel like such a shock to hear his name. He covered it by leaning forward slightly, working up the words to reply. His left hand, the one not resting on the console, was gripping his left knee so tightly there would be marks there tomorrow.

“Sorry, Mom, sorry...I knew you’d be worried, but...I got in sort of deep in the Outer Rim.” He was pretty sure that was the understatement of the century. That was like saying Sheev Palpatine had had a passing interest in politics. “I’m fine, though. I’m good.” She hadn’t asked how he was, but he figured it was the best thing to lead with. “How’re you?”

“If you knew you would worry me, why didn’t you send word?” Leia sighed, closed her eyes and shook her head. “I was very worried,” she repeated, trying to keep the hurt out of her voice.

“I...I know, I’m sorry,” Kylo Ren tried, then paused. He realized he didn’t sound quite right, his voice, his word choices, something about his voice. She’d hear it, he knew, which is why he had even less time. “Are you alone?”

She frowned, noticing something off...different. It was true that Ben had been gone a long time, but there was something a little unsettling about Ben’s image. She pressed her mouth and nodded.

“I’m in my office.”

“Everything else has to be turned off, Mom.” He licked his lips as he watched her, the fine lines around her mouth when she made that face. Billions of people were going to die, and he couldn’t stop it, wouldn’t stop it. But she was his mother, and while she was as deeply flawed as he was, he never doubted for an instant that she loved him. That had been part of what choked him when he’d seen that starchart in Hux’s office.

“What’s this about?” Leia asked carefully, frowning deeply. She glanced around and turned off her pad and the comm unit out of the office. “Ben, you’re starting to scare me.”

“You need to take a trip. Offworld. Go find Dad. Visit Uncle Luke. Anything. Offworld. Away from the whole system even,” he said, words rushing out more quickly than he meant them to. The hand on his leg tightened almost painfully. “Just...go.”

Leia’s brows drew even further together, and she shifted in her seat. “Excuse me?” She kept her voice measured. “Ben, you sound maniac. What do you mean, get out of the system?”

“Exactly that, Mom. Please, I’m sure you could use a vacation. Take it now. The time’s good for you.” The more he rambled, the more like his old self he sounded, like someone who was unsure, was always begging, it felt like, and covering it with brash jokes.

“I’m not with the Senate right now,” Leia said, frowning deeply. “I don’t have time to take a vacation.” She shifted in her chair, confused and starting to get upset, just because of Ben’s tone. “Really, what aren’t you telling me?”

Kylo Ren - Ben Solo- whomever he was at present, he pressed his mouth and leaned toward the screen. He didn’t want her to argue, or worry. What did she know about any of it, the things he’d been through since he’d last seen her face, the things he knew now, the things he’d done, the things he’d touched. The pain he’d been in, even after finding a place he thought could cure it. Maybe nowhere could cure it. Maybe that was what he needed to learn from the Force, that he didn’t belong in the darkness or the light, but would always be pulled.

“It doesn’t matter what I’m not telling you. I’m telling you to stay away from the Hosnian system!” His heard his voice rising and paused to take a deep breath. “That’s all, okay?”

“That is certainly not all, Ben!” Leia’s voice matched her son’s, measure for measure. “You will tell me what this about! Where are you? What are you doing that you’re telling me to get off the Senate system?”

“It doesn’t matter where I am because you don’t care anyway.” He closed his eyes for a second to center himself.

“I care, Ben, of course I care.”

“You said you’re not with the Senate...but you answered this call signal. Where are you?”

“I’m...somewhere else,” Leia said, frowning. “The Senate has...delegated some responsibilities to a unilateral organization.”

Which meant a Senate-funded but not blatantly approved fighting force. A ready army for...what? For them? For the First Order? He knew there were run ins with a fighting group that seemed to swoop in on certain First Order attacks, and they weren’t ships marked with any Republic symbols or codes. His mother, princess, senator, general, back to a senator, and what? Back to being a general?

Information he should have passed on to Hux. He swallowed in the second of silence between them, the air so thick he had to swallow or he’d choke.

“Well, I’m glad you’re finally taking it easy,” he said wryly, hearing his father in his voice, hearing himself in his voice. It was strangely comforting that irritation with his family brought that out in him, or brought him back to them. Or terrifying, he wasn’t sure which. Something inside him that wasn’t physical ached and pulled and he half gasped when it felt like tearing. His mother was beautiful when she was angry. Her eyes made him want to prove himself, but how could he? He’d been gone a year, and she was already yelling at him. “I have to go.”

“You have to go?” Leia sat up again. “Ben, this is...I haven’t heard from you in ages. Talk to me, please.”

“You’re busy, I can tell.” What could he say? Mom, I met a guy…

“I’m not too busy for you,” she insisted, leaning closer to the holo as if she could get closer to her son that way. “Ben, It’s been almost a year, I’ve missed you.”

Why did she have to say those things, and say them like that? She’d probably get a message on another screen, or on the unseen datapad right beside her, any second. He’d experienced this before, her concern, which was real and intense, and then her distraction, which was just as real. He almost waited for it before remembering he’d watched her turn everything else in the room off.

“I had things to sort out, Mom. You told me to, last time we spoke.” His voice was a little strange again; the hairline cracks in it were lengthening every time she said his name. His forbidden, stupid, unsaid name.

“Well, I would have liked a little warning that you would fall off the stargrid for a year. What did you do? Where did you go?”

“It was a year! I went a lot of places.” He shook his head and looked down at his scuffed, First Order-issued boots. He wondered, suddenly, where his old clothes were. He hadn’t even thought of them before, when he was rooting through someone else’s laundry. Where was his bag, with that piece he’d scavenged for the Falcon? “It doesn’t really matter.”

“It matters to me, sweetheart.” Leia’s voice was softer now, sadder. It was as if she had aged five years in one breath.

Ben - Kylo Ren- knew he could try. He’d always been able to tell her pieces of things in the past. Enough pieces made enough of a whole to satisfy her questions.

“I did some research...old writings about the Force. Did some experimentation of my own...obviously didn’t blow myself up, so it went pretty well.” He smiled a little, that crooked smile. “Built my own lightsaber.” He cursed himself for saying it a second later.

“You’ve been training?” she asked, eyebrows up. “Your own lightsaber, that’s impressive. Are you going back to the Temple?”

“Not...at the moment,” Kylo said, feeling his own reticence and Ben’s leap of pride at the compliment, quick and impersonal as it had been. “But eventually, probably. I guess.”

“Eventually.” Leia beamed out of the holoprojector. “That’s an improvement, isn’t it? If you have a Jedi’s weapon, you should learn how to use it.”

He thought it best to avoid the specifics of the cracked, bleeding crystal that powered his bright red blade. Instead he just shrugged, agreeing without actually agreeing.

“I know how to use it pretty well, Mom. There are other ways to learn than just from Uncle Luke,” he said with a touch of bitterness he could taste as it slid down his throat.

“Well.” She backed off, eyebrows up. She could see that Ben was getting defensive. “At least you know...he is always an option.”

“Right. Always tucked away where he’s not really doing much good for anyone.” Kylo wanted to scream suddenly, watching her expression. Where was Luke when the entire galaxy was about to change? Where was the last Jedi when a new power was rising? Ignorant? Hiding? Did he just not care?

How bad did he have to be, Kylo Ren suddenly thought, to bring out the hero in someone else?

“That’s not fair,” Leia said firmly, frowning. “He’s doing a lot of good where he is. He’s restoring a dead culture, he’s founding a new Jedi Order. He’s fought long and hard to live as a Jedi.”

“Hopefully he’s enjoying his retirement,” Kylo said wryly, raising his chin slightly. He looked down at his hand on his knee and concentrated on loosening his grip.

Leia took a deep breath, sighed through her nose and shook her head. “He’d be happy to see you.” She swallowed before continuing. “I’d be happy to see you too, you know.”

He was already shaking his head before she’d finished her sentence. It was hard to ignore the actual regret that was churning in his gut. The tearing sensation in his chest was back. He had already told her too much. He wanted to tell her everything and hide in her arms like he’d had as a small child when that voice had whispered terrifying things in his head at night.

“That’s not possible right now,” he said quietly.

“Maybe sometime soon, alright?” Leia asked, smiling a little, worried to her core. Something was hurting her son, something had shaken him hard enough to galvanize him to reach out. A year away and he called to make sure that she was away from Hosnian Prime. She took a deep breath. “You can always reach me.”

Ben had no idea if that was going to be true. He reached out toward the holo as though he could touch her face. She was just as hidden from him as he was from her, just as full of secrets as he was. Did she ache with them, he wondered?

“Yeah, I can always try,” he said quietly. “I love you, Mom.” The words had been pulled out of him, pulled so hard he felt like his sternum had been ripped out with them.

Leia chuckled, smiling at Ben. She tilted her head and nodded. “I love you too, Ben.” She took a deep breath and gestured. “Call again soon, alright?”

Maybe never again, he thought, and the ache in his chest made him catch his breath.

“Yeah, of course. Soon as I can.” Ben nodded, Ben with so little Kylo Ren in him it felt hard to remember he had somewhere else to be.

The general smiled, nodded, took a deep breath as she sat back in her chair. “May the force be with you.”

Ben swallowed before he could say anything. She was strong. She’d be alright no matter what happened.

“May the Force be with you, Mom.” His fingers hovered over the button to end the call, not strong enough to sever the connection himself.

Tilting her head to the side, Leia smiled at Ben. “Love you, sweetheart.” She chuckled and leaned forward again, looking at the pain, hurt and confusion written plain on his face. “Talk again soon.” she terminated the call, her face quickly leaving the small holopad.

Ben took a deep breath as he sat back in the chair, hand still by the switch even after Leia had ended the call, like he’d still have a choice to end it on his own. He sat for a moment then pushed himself to stand up. His mother was safe, that was the only reassurance he’d needed. Wasn’t it?

When he walked back to Hux’s office, he was pretty sure he was Kylo Ren again. He felt safe behind the helmet, like there was no guilt showing on his face.

Hux received him quickly, already standing, his eyes flicking over the datapads. Star Killer was almost in place, soon the charging would occur.

He looked up at Kylo Ren, his face triumphant, sure and absolute. “It’s time.”

Kylo Ren frowned, again glad he was hidden. He hadn’t expected to hear that this soon.

“Now? Did you...get an order from the Supreme Leader?” he asked, hearing the catch in his voice. Why couldn’t he speak correctly to anyone today?

“We’ve had confirmed orders for a week. We needed to wait until the rotation was at its zenith…” He looked up at Kylo, frowning a little. “It will take six hours to fully charge, after that we’ll be firing on the Hosnian system.”

Six hours. He wondered what it would feel like, those five planets suddenly destroyed. There was a part of him that pretended to be convinced it wouldn’t happen. Something would stay Hux’s hand at the last minute, the weapon wouldn’t work, someone would stop it. But Kylo Ren knew, Ben Solo knew, that General Hux would never stop, the weapon had already been tested and was fully operational and primed, and no hero was coming to save the day. He wasn’t that hero. He wasn’t even villain enough to draw a hero.

The expressionless black helmet nodded sharply.

“You’re ready?” he asked, as he’d asked before.

“Of course,” he turned, grabbing a pad and then walking to look out of the viewport. “The science officers have already activated the hypermagnetic fields.”

He took a deep breath, turning back to Kylo Ren, eyes practically glittering with the enormity of it. “We are shaping the universe, Ren,” he said, walking by Kylo, pulling his cap down. “Let’s be conquerors.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good news! This is not the end of this story!!! There is one more chapter, but just fair warning, there is some explicit stuff in this section. I suppose that's also good news? Either way: behold, an update.

The moment seemed to stretch on for eternity. The sudden gutting of the nearby star, the darkness that settled over Kinath-I. Then the shudder, the groundquake that shook every stormtrooper, made Hux take a step back as his wide eyes watched the phantom energy beam shoot out, his destiny written in the heat waves that emanated from the massive containment cylinder.

It took Arrik’s breath away, the sheer beauty of it, the scale and importance and the history he was creating.

Kylo Ren hadn’t shown, wasn’t on stage with his Colonels and Phasma, but Hux couldn’t spend time thinking about where he had gotten off to. The last of the congratulations accepted, the rank and file returned to barracks, quarters, and battle stations. They were expecting some sort of reaction, and Hux had the _Finalizer_ , _Requiem_ and the _Faultless_ protecting the base.

Hours seemed to stretch on, and Hux was sure he shouldn’t be standing. He was still recovering, after all. He made his way into his rooms and sat, ignoring the fact that it seemed as if his legs gave out beneath him. Going through his pad he noticed that the door to Ren’s rooms had logged an entry. Rallying one more time, Hux stood up and tucked his cap into his belt, walking through Star Killer towards Ren’s rooms.

He knocked on the door once before scanning his code cylinder, stepping into the Knight’s private quarters.

“Is this where you watched?”

Kylo Ren was standing by the window, hands clasped behind his back. He felt gutted, still experiencing the wrenching pain of that many lives extinguished at once in the Force. He chewed his lip behind the helmet, hollowed and raw inside. Nodding once, he turned to look at the conquering general. There were no words yet, so he just looked him over. He’d never seen Hux’s shoulders so square, the exhaustion etched into fine lines by the corners of his eyes but nowhere else. He was radiant, almost, suffused with power and success and fulfillment. Kylo blinked and looked away from him slightly.

“I hadn’t known my room afforded such a view.” Through the vocoder, his words were steady. He couldn’t let Hux know that when the blasts had struck the planets, he’d fallen to one knee as though he’d been hit as well.

Hux felt something wrong with Ren. It echoed even though nothing was said, nothing was sent over their connection. He went to him, putting his hands on the helmet and pulling his head down, his fingers finding the latch easily.

Kylo pressed his mouth, biting back on the protest that had sprung up first. He closed his eyes tightly for a moment as the helmet was pulled free, feeling his cropped hair brush against the sides of his face before he looked up to meet Hux’s eyes.

The general nodded once, turning a little to place the helmet down. He put both hands on Ren’s neck, fingers under his jaw, tilting his head up as if inspecting him for a flaw.

“What’s troubling you?”

“There’s no trouble,” Kylo Ren said, the echoes of death still ringing in his soul, the tearing sensation in the Force of that many lives extinguished together. It was impossible to hold the other man’s intense, pale gaze, like looking into the cloudless brightness of a summer sky and suddenly being confronted with the sun.

“You’re lying,” Hux said with absolute surety. He set his jaw and shook his head. “This is a time of victory. We are leading the galaxy into a new era.” Even now, even with all of this he was willing, eager to share his success with Kylo Ren. It wasn’t his victory it was theirs. He wanted more from Ren, something that confirmed the ambition he had once felt and admired.

“I have no reason to lie to you,” Kylo said defensively, pulling free of Hux’s hold. “You’re a conqueror, Arrik; don’t throw accusations now. Where’s your expensive brandy? Where’s your sparking cigar?”

Hux set his jaw, annoyed by the dismissal. He took a deep breath, eyes searching Kylo’s face carefully. “There’s much we have to do,” Hux took a step back and gestured. “Would liquor make you feel better?”

“Probably,” Kylo Ren muttered -Ben Solo muttered- before running his hand through his hair. “What do you have? My room’s dry.”

“Enough to motivate moving locations.” Hux took a step over to the window’s ledge where he had placed Kylo’s helmet. He picked it up and offered it to Kylo as he walked by. “I have whiskey. Wine, if you’re partial.”

Kylo Ren took the helmet with a strange sense of relief, exhaling slowly along with the sound of the lock once it was on his head again. He followed Hux to the door and then out into the hallway; the general’s rooms weren't too far from his, though he imagined the man spent little time in them any time he was on the base.

“It seems like an occasion for wine,” he agreed in the helmet’s emotionless rumble.

Hux smiled a little and nodded, opening up the doors. He led them into his own quarters, not too far away, and immediately went to the bar, getting out two glasses. He poured them both significant portions and, mostly to annoy Kylo, he grabbed a cigar from the box on the little pushcart bar. He walked over to the viewport, turning back to Kylo, holding a glass out to him.

“Better?”

Kylo took the glass, unable to smell the wine through the helmet’s filters. He wondered idly if the sensors would read the liquid as dangerous, as poison, as something that the leader of the Knights of Ren should avoid lest he say and do stupid things, forgetting his elevated position.

“Where is this from?” he asked, setting it down to take his helmet off.

“Ando. It’s delicate.” Hux raised his glass to his mouth, taking a sip. He took a deep breath after, looking out on the expanse of the planet, glowing dully in the reflections of the dual moonlight. He pressed his hand over the new scar on his chest, the flesh itchy as it continued to reform over his muscles. Despite the bacta, the scar tissue would never disappear or fade into his skin. His chest would always feel too small.

He turned back to Ren, watching the facsimile that covered him.

“We have attracted attention. Are your knights prepared to defend Star Killer?”

Kylo frowned slightly, lowering his glass without having tried any of the wine. Of course they’d attracted attention. The weapon had destroyed five worlds in as many minutes. While it was a terror technique, it was also going to rouse the Resistance that had pretended to be outside Republican jurisdiction. They’d be here, under the command of his mother.

“My Knights have been sent to other worlds to put down other uprisings. How soon do you anticipate an attack?” he asked.

“Within the week,” Hux said, frowning. “Possibly sooner. We have an impenetrable shield and two destroyers, but the Knights would be a valuable asset.”

Taking another sip of the wine, Hux put the cigar on the small ledge and then put his gloved hand on Ren’s back, holding him still.

«You are uncertain.»

Kylo shook his head, unwilling to admit that weakness above any other. He was supposed to be done with it; he’d made a choice, and it felt like he’d made it years ago now. There was no condescension in Hux’s voice, but there was also no room to imagine it a question. Hux knew he was uncertain.

«There are no doubts about my loyalty, I hope.» I stood there and watched it happen, he thought. I didn’t turn away, even when I fell hard on my knees. I owed you that. I owed them that.

Hux tilted his head up, spreading his hand, pressing a little more firmly against his back. He took a deep breath and nodded. He didn’t question Kylo, but there was something off about him.

«I do not doubt you.»

“This wine...where does it come from?” Kylo shook his head. He’d already asked that. “I am sorry for...this.” He knew Hux would hear it all in his voice. That he was sorry for all of it. He was paralyzed by it, made wordless by it.

Now, even Hux was confused. He set his glass down, and turned towards Ren, sliding his hand up to Ren’s neck. He squeezed gently, and then slid his hands up the helmet, taking it off carefully. He set it on the ledge, facing the room, and took a few seconds to look over the deep lines in Ren’s face, how full his eyes seemed. Arrik felt something like a desire to protect this man, an emotion he knew he should have tried to avoid.

“You don’t have to explain yourself.” Hux took a step back, picking up his wine and leaving the cigar, walking to the couch. “Stay the night.”

It was the most blatant invitation he’d ever received. Kylo turned his head to look at him, surprise obvious on his face. He still hadn’t learned to hide his expressions, relying on the helmet for any of that. After a moment, he picked up his own wineglass and finally took a sip of it before walking closer to Hux.

How many times had they positioned themselves this way? Back when he was a confused smuggler and Hux was...well, he was already a self-assured general with his way straight and clear before him. Ben had knelt at his feet then, turning his own will to Hux’s and learning what that had meant.

“Alright,” he said quietly.

Hux nodded, looking up at Ren. He smirked slightly, tilting his head up.

“Alright,” Hux murmured, taking another sip of his wine. “What’s that look for?”

“What look?” Kylo Ren took another sip of wine, letting his shoulders relax slightly.

“The one on your face, Ren. What look do you think I’m talking about?” Hux asked, smiling slightly, teasing. Destruction suited the general, putting him in an accommodating mood “Sit. Relax.”

He felt like he’d never relax again, but he obediently sat down beside Hux. Cradling the wine glass in both hands between his knees, he leaned forward to rest his elbows on his thighs.

“You must be exhausted,” he said finally. “All that anticipation, all that planning, and now it’s done. The adrenaline release.”

“There is always more to do,” Hux murmured, spreading his legs so that his knee touched Ren’s. “Are you tired of war already?”

“The war hasn’t even begun,” Kylo said knowingly, then swallowed the rest of his sentence with a mouthful of wine.

Hux hummed, but didn’t speak, taking another sip of his drink. He glanced over at Ren and then looked ahead.

«You’re tense.»

Kylo felt walls come up in his mind that had come down. He couldn’t let Hux see the complicated thoughts he was having. They weren’t even thoughts with words, they weren’t even thoughts in images. They were tumultuous feelings, disgusted despair and exaltation at this triumph of Hux’s, this triumph of the First Order.

“The day was long,” he said finally. It seemed safe.

Hux frowned, almost flinched as the walls between them built up. He set his jaw and took a deep breath, turning the glass stem in his hands.

«I could help with that.» Arrik murmured, almost absently.

If there was relief from all of this, Kylo Ren craved it with a starved hunger. Something to fill up the hollows carved into him by what he’d felt, by what he knew. His mother was safe. Billions of lives had flashed out in an instant, the collective cry of a system’s moment before oblivion.

«Then help,» he said in silent desperation. «Give me something to end...it.»

Hux frowned, made a noise in the back of his throat and put his empty glass down on the table next to the couch. He didn’t allow himself time to think, reaching over to pull Kylo closer, one hand wrapped around his neck. Leaning in, Hux kissed him hard.

Their connection was open, understanding and knowing passing between them without pause. Arrik forced himself open as well, not just the images and breath-catching moments of glory and heat, but the nausea, his own worry, the anticipation, the pain he still felt when he stood for too long. He sent across images, pulling him forward, onto the ground, in between his spread legs.

Kylo fell to his knees like a worshipper, hands on Hux’s thighs tightly. He moaned as he leaned forward, pushing his legs apart. He could smell the wool of his uniform, the traces of soap from his earlier time in the refresher, the singular smell of his skin through all of that.

He pushed his mouth against the fabric over Hux’s crotch, closing his eyes tightly. His fingers were bruising where they gripped just above the general’s knees. Brought to his knees by Arrik again.

Arrik swallowed a gasp, placing hands on either side of Kylo’s head, almost clutching at Kylo’s hair. He knew Kylo was needy, wanting, but this was incredible, something intense that crawled under Arrik’s skin. Kylo’s mouth against him was instantly unnerving, sent waves of heat through his body.

«Kylo,» he murmured, encouraging, wanting more.

He needed to be wanted, to feel more than need from Hux. It wasn’t about having a place or a mission or an appointed position. It boiled down to this, to knowing for whom he’d kneel and for this man, this man who was made of bladed edges and cold fire, to know when to have him kneel.

He opened his mouth over him through the trousers, sliding insistent fingers up the insides of his thighs. The heavy dark fabric caught in temporary folds under his palms.

Hux let Kylo move him, didn’t push him away, didn’t try to control him. The emotions he was feeling across their connection were overwhelming and insistent. He made a noise, shifting under Kylo’s mouth.

“Talk to me,” Hux whispered, leaning down over him, holding him close, breathing hard. “Tell me what you need.”

“Do I have to say it aloud?” Kylo Ren murmured, voice low and dark as he raised his head.

Hux nodded, and he smirked a little, leaning down to kiss Kylo almost gently before pulling his head back by his hair. His hand was far less gentle. He stood up, almost dragging Kylo up, and lead him through the main room to the bedroom.

Hux pushed him towards the bed, face a little red. He stared at Kylo, almost daring him to do something as he slowly started undoing his jacket. It was almost a display, showing off, chin tilted up as he revealed more and more of the angry purple scar Kylo had left on him.

Kylo almost flinched away, eyes showing slightly too much white as he turned his head from the damage he’d inflicted. Healed, yes, but it would never be gone. The evidence of his strength and his mistake would always be there. He grabbed both sides of the partially opened jacket and ripped it open the rest of the way, straining and destroying the remaining clasps that kept the front of the jacket closed.

He lowered his mouth to Arrik’s chest, grabbing him by his sides to pull him closer. He made a soft sound that was more growl than fondness, more possessive than emotional. He let his tongue trace the edge of the scar, the skin strange in its newness.

Hux almost laughed as Ren took control, demanding and angry. He hummed in the back of his throat, shrugging out of his jacket before running his hands through Ren’s choppy hair.

Their connection made every intent obvious, and Hux pulled Kylo across the room until he backed onto his bed, crawling backwards, placing a heeled boot on the knight’s chest.

Kylo growled again, grabbing onto Hux’s ankle as he followed him onto the bed. He yanked him down a bit by it, knocking the general fully onto his back. The man was his; he had marked him, he could move him. He kissed his bare stomach, then up to his chest.

Hux didn’t fight against Kylo, almost gasping as the man handled him. He tugged at Kylo’s clothing, squeezing his sides with his thighs.

«You’re going out of order.»

«I didn’t know you had a schedule for everything,» Kylo answered, taking Hux’s nipple between his teeth and rubbing his tongue against it. «Give me your agenda then.»

“Start by taking my clothes off,” Hux growled, arching his back as Kylo’s mouth moved over his chest.

He closed his teeth a little more, then pulled back. His grip was rough as he grabbed onto the heel of Hux’s boot, bending his knee as he pressed forward against him.

“All of them?”

“I would prefer all off to none,” Hux bared his teeth as he pushed against Kylo’s chest. “Hurry up,” he snapped. «I’m growing impatient.»

“Your impatience doesn’t matter to me,” Kylo murmured, pulling back again to tug his boot off. It fit him well, made to curve with his calf. It made a dull sound when he threw it across the room. The other boot gave him a little more trouble. Once he’d thrown it and pulled his uniform trousers down to his ankles, he bit the soft skin at the inside of Arrik’s knee to punish him for the inconvenience.

Hux smirked as Ren aggressively undressed him. He leaned down to kick his pants and basics fully off. He tugged on Ren’s hair as he fell back, smirking. All in all, he was rather pleased with himself.

“Further up, Ren,” he muttered, spreading his legs, sliding one over Ren’s shoulder.

It wasn’t following orders exactly, and it wasn’t just doing precisely what he wanted either. He glanced up at Hux’s face, then turned his head to gently kiss his inner thigh before biting it hard.

Hux growled and pulled on Ren’s hair again. He was barely hard, naked and warm under Ren’s attention.

“Don’t worry,” Kylo almost purred. “All of these will be safely hidden under your clothes. I’ll be the only one who knows about them.” He moved the tip of his tongue against the bite mark, feeling the indentations his teeth had made in his pale flesh.

“And if another found out?” Hux asked, lying back on the bed, tucking one hand behind head, the other just barely resting in Ren’s hair. “Another number ready to take your place?”

He was teasing, indolent. He had no desire to invite anyone to bed after being with Ren, but the man’s jealousy was an easy thing to rile up.

Hux was not to be disappointed. Kylo Ren turned his dark eyes back to the general, crouched there between his legs with the taste of his body already in his mouth.

“Then I would kill them,” he said simply, situationally teasing but meaning every single word. His pupils were dilated with need and something else, something deeper.

“Would I get to watch?”

“Of course. I’m going to write my name in his blood on your throat. I’m going to kiss you to the background sound of her final ragged screams.” Kylo set kisses down slowly where Hux’s hipbones pressed against his skin, one hand sliding to the curve of the man’s ass.

Hux set his foot on the bed, lifting his hips up slightly. He couldn’t help the satisfied look on his face, the pleased feeling he sent along their connection. His thigh was still pressed against Ren’s shoulder, knee crooked awkwardly in the air as he let Ren move him.

“We will conquer the universe like that,” Hux murmured, smirking, “with blood on your hands. Flags falling across the window.”

“I want your blood too,” Kylo said quietly, looking up at Hux again to catch his eyes. He wanted that moment of intense contact, everything open between them. “You know that, right?”

Arri nodded slowly, the tips of his fingers barely brushing against Kylo’s head, dark hair curling around them. “Try to be more subtle about it next time,” he said, his other hand running down the still-healing scar

There was a flair of guilt, but it was twisted up in arousal. This man had managed to do this to all his emotions, corrupting them until they were all like this, marbled dark and light. At the same time, he wanted to cover the scar with his hand to hide the mark and dig his nails into it, claw-like, and rip it open again.

He moaned to himself as he lowered his head, brushing his cheek against Hux’s near arousal.

Shifting, Arrik lifted his hips again, turning them towards Kylo. He smirked, reaching down with one hand to pull Kylo’s hair, dragging him up. He held his cock gently, pressing the head against Kylo’s mouth.

Again, the Knight let himself be moved, allowed the general his leash. He opened his mouth after a teasing moment of feeling Hux’s cock against his pressed lips, taking him in and circling the head with a broad movement of his tongue. It was a way of consuming him, he half-realized, then his mind left abstractions to concentrate on the sensation of his hot skin in his mouth, the taut flesh against his tongue and heavy on his lower lip.

He pushed forward against the slight pull in his hair, mouth tight as Hux’s cock slid further into his mouth. He spread his fingers on Hux’s inner thigh, pressing his legs open a little bit more.

Hux made a low noise in the back of his throat, pushing his hips into Kylo’s mouth. It was lazy, comfortable, and he knew that could change in a second. He kept his hand tight in Ren’s hair, closing his eyes as he enjoyed Ren’s mouth around him.

Kylo considered drawing blood, or leaving more marks than the one he’d already made on Hux’s thigh. But that was enough for now, he decided. He was kneeling, and that was what he needed. He’d already spilled this man’s blood on the planet he’d killed; it was already clear that there was some ownership. That’s what it came down to, more than being wanted. Something far less fleeting than just desire.

He kept his movements slow through strength of will, pacing himself as he listened to the general’s quickened breath. That was power too. He let the other man feel the tip of his tongue drawing a thin, firm line of pressure up the underside of his cock, glancing up to see Hux’s face.

Hux was lying there, mouth open, breathing hard. He was flushed from neck to navel, his scar raised off his chest. He gripped Kylo’s hair tightly, but he didn’t pull him or guide him. His other hand twisted in the covers as Kylo kept moving over him.

He so wanted to hold Kylo’s head still and fuck into his mouth. He wanted control, more than just Kylo on his knees, his mouth open and stretched around his cock. He set his jaw for a second and then gasped, pumping his hips into Kylo’s mouth.

“Stars, Ren, your fucking mouth.”

The general’s desire was as livid and raw as his scar. It burned through Kylo’s veins and made him want it to, the images so intense in his head, feeding off Arrik’s aroused need.

Silently, wordless, he told Hux to do what he wanted. Anything he wanted. He ran his hands up his outer thighs and leaned down to take him into his mouth, relaxing the muscles in his throat to take him in deeply then make a low sound around him.

Hux groaned, putting both hands in Kylo’s hair. He was warm and soft and everything Hux wanted when he thought about fucking Kylo. Pliable, malleable, Kylo in his hands as he held his head still and thrust his cock deep down the man’s hot throat

He couldn’t quite get words out, trusting their connection. His grip was harsh as he slowly pushed himself into Kylo and held him there, breathing hard, buried in Kylo’s mouth.

“So good,” he murmured, pushing his hips up, moving Kylo with him. «So good for me.»

How good was he? Kylo wondered as he dug his short nails into Hux’s thighs. He couldn’t be considered a good person anymore, not by any means. He pulled his hands down as he let Hux thrust his cock into his mouth, keeping his jaw muscles loose as he took it all. His nails left long, jagged red lines against Hux’s white skin, skin that had never seen the sun, skin like the unbroken surface of new snow.

He made a noise low in his throat, the vibrations distinct before he swallowed around Hux’s cock. It wasn’t very clear whether he was agreeing or disagreeing, and even their open connection didn’t clarify it.

Arrik moaned, turning his head to the side. It was lazy, unhurried, and while he imagined fucking Kylo’s mouth hard, spilling his seed down his throat and then pushing him away, now wasn’t the time. He would have left Kylo needy and angry, the man would take what he wanted, regardless of Hux’s opinion. Arrik shifted his hips again, the head of his cock brushing along the sides of Ren’s mouth and then sighed, pulling Kylo back by his hair. He shifted back on the bed, enjoying the sting on his thighs, the stretch of his legs.

«Come up here,» he murmured softly, lying back on the bed. «Tell me what you want.»

Kylo didn’t know what he wanted; he was counting on Hux to make the decisions here. The way he’d decided that Ben Solo would be useful to the First Order, the way he’d decided to destroy the Hosnian system. He needed that part of him now.

He slid against his body as he moved up into his arms. So close to the scar, it felt like there was something rising from it, the aftershocks of near-tragedy.

«I’ll do whatever you want.» The voice in his head was barely a real voice at all. «Just tell me. Command me.» Left to his own devices, Kylo couldn’t find a middle ground between fleeing the room and tearing Arrik Hux apart in his desire to be close to him, so close his hands were covered in his warm blood.

Hux almost purred, pulling him up, smirking. He looked over Kylo’s clothed body as he lay naked underneath him. He sent images along their connection for Ren, Kylo riding him, hands behind his back, his fingers in Ren’s mouth. He smirked, pulling Kylo forward, hands on his thighs tightly.

He wanted that too, Kylo knew in that moment, feeling the phantom sensation of fingers and their breaths coming harder together. Reaching out to the side with an open hand, he yanked the side table drawer open to get at the bottle of lube, letting the drawer itself crash to the ground.

“Get me ready,” he demanded in a low growl, dropping the bottle onto Hux’s chest.

Hux pushed the bottle off his chest, running his hands up Ren’s thighs, fingers catching on the fabric of his pants, tugging on his broad belt. He was completely unclothed under the knight, looking him over. He took a deep breath, dropping the belt off the bed. He pushed open his robes, hands running up his chest, sliding the fabric off his shoulders.

“Take these off.” His fingers fumbled with Ren’s shirt, pulling at it.

While Hux undid the almost invisible small black buttons, Kylo pulled the heavy layers off his arms and dropped them off the bed. His hands had moved to undo his trousers before the robes had landed with a soft exhalation on the floor.

Hux continued to pull off Ren’s shirt, running his hands over Ren’s chest, looking over the small scars, the raised flesh. He took a deep breath, lost for a second in the imagined recollections of blasterfire and vibroblades.

There were times that Kylo forgot he had a body now; it didn’t matter, apart from keeping it in the best condition for fighting that he could. That’s what it was-- a machine for war, a honed weapon against the First Order’s enemies, Hux’s enemies. The injuries he’d taken blended together; when he’d been a smuggler, Ben Solo’s scars each had a story, one that could be told over and over to get free drinks and bed partners, stories that added to his family’s epic reputation, another Solo with tales of daring-do. The newer marks had only served to make him angrier, to create the pain he needed to win the battles before him, the tears and scorches that had raised the darkness in him so that it consumed him. And now who could say who’d held the blaster that had scarred his shoulder? It didn’t matter. War was war. He was covered in layers of heavy fabric most of the time anyway. Who saw him but Arrik Hux? And Hux could invent any story he wanted for those scars.

He leaned down to catch Hux’s partially open mouth with his, more teeth than lips when he kissed him. The more pain, the better; the more marks, the more real and dark he would be.

Growling as Ren kissed him, Arrik ran his hands across his shoulders, digging his fingers into the back of Ren’s neck. He pressed his knees against Ren’s sides, hands fumbling. He gasped and pushed his hips up again.

He wanted Ren on top of him, riding him into the mattress, fucking himself hard, relentless over him. His nails scratched red lines across Kylo’s shoulders, adding to the sharp angles of scars on the man’s body. He sent images of heat and hurt, pleasure as they fucked roughly.

“Up, Ren, you’re not…” he gasped, writhing under him, hard and aching. “Up, I need you.”

Kylo wanted to laugh at the desperation in Hux’s voice, but he felt it too, like a deep, throbbing ache in his core. He ground himself down against the general, wanting him to moan like it was real pain, this imitation of torture they both enjoyed.

“You need me more than you know,” he growled, relishing the hard press of Hux’s cock against him. He relished even more not giving him what he wanted yet. There was a satisfaction in denying them both, a joy in the pain of waiting.

«You’re a kriffing tease,» Hux gasped, his head back as he groaned. He tried to push his hips up against Ren again, feet sliding against the covers. He knew that Ren was riling him up on purpose, but it was working a little too well. There were red welts on Ren’s neck, and then his shoulders, down his sides. He pushed at Ren’s hips again, biting at his neck, trying to incite some kind of response that would give him some kind of relief.

Finally, when he couldn’t take any more of it, Kylo Ren slid back, grabbing the bottle of lube (so utilitarian, his mind noted randomly, so industrial with its grey packaging, nothing at all like the colorful, cartoony products he’d had on the Falcon) and squirting some of the thick substance between his hands, rubbing them cold on Hux’s cock. He used both hands, one after the other, slicking his hardness as if drawing him out.

Hux set his jaw, digging his fingers into his thighs as Ren worked him over. It was so close, Ren’s hands were tight and quickly warming. He swallowed, pushing his hips up again.

It was this heat he wanted, the heat that Hux’s cool demeanor usually contained. It was seen rarely, not like sun behind clouds but like lava under snow. He wanted to feel it now, that fire exploding in the depths of his chill eyes.

Kneeling up over him, Kylo pushed himself down, guiding Hux’s cock up against himself. It was still a tease, for himself as well; keeping Hux there, Kylo pushed his own fingers into himself, giving himself some release while the general had to wait.

“Patience,” he whispered under his breath, pushing his fingers into himself slowly, spreading them once inside. “Patience.”

Arrik leaned back, pressing his mouth, feeling Ren through their connection. It felt so good, even as he kept his hands firmly on Ren’s ass, not even inside him. He took a deep breath in, shifting down. Even though the general’s hands were holding him still and open, he could feel the stretch, the way Kylo opened up around his own fingers, how hard Kylo was.

“I want you now,” Arrik growled, drawing his fingernails down Ren’s ass, gripping the backs of his thighs. “Now, Kylo.”

A command was a command, and while Kylo could feel Hux’s body almost shaking with need, there was no begging in his voice. Without saying anything else, Kylo seated himself on Hux, giving himself just enough time to adjust. He could hear his own breaths, a counterpoint with the other man’s as he raised himself again, muscles in his thighs taut, then pushed himself down onto Hux’s cock again.

«Stars, Kylo,» Hux gasped, head back, mouth open. The man was monstrous, strong and tight and incessant. This was what he wanted, Ren on top of him, fucking himself on his cock as he just watched. He swallowed and pushed his hips up, into Kylo, pulling him down.

«Faster.»

He didn’t need to be told, really; the pressure building in his body and his head pushed Kylo into a faster rhythm. The habitual cold of Starkiller was gone; the sweat rolled down the sides of his face like he was training, like the hot rain of a jungle planet.

Kylo watched Hux’s face, reading his pleasure in the furrow between the general’s brows, in the shape of his open mouth. Through their connection, he let him feel the sensations he was experiencing each time he sat back onto Hux’s cock, the harsh jarring movements they shared.

Arrik’s head was tilted back, letting Kylo ride him. He made a low noise and ran his hands up his own torso, fingers skimming the edge of his burn. Pushing his hands through his hair he moaned, turning his head to the side.

This was incredible, Kylo Ren was incredibly powerful above him, he could almost feel every strain, every muscle as Kylo flexed and fucked himself hard. He moaned again, his breath catching in his throat as Kylo forced him into the mattress again.

Kylo let his chin drop as he concentrated on the movements, the energetic pumping motion both of them were locked into as he rocked on him, seating himself on Hux with almost devastating finality on each thrust. He growled, the noise coming from deep in his broad chest. He glanced up to see Arrik’s face again, then raised one open hand, the tendons tight along the back of his wrist, and used the Force to make Hux feel it, to feel that hard cock in his mouth, to feel his breathing obstructed as an unseen cock pushed forward into his mouth again and again.

Hux’s mouth was stretched around whatever force Kylo had put on him. He felt the veins, the head and he sucked lazily, his hands gripping the covers as Kylo rode him and fucked his mouth at the same time. Moaning, Arrik tried to push his hips up, tried to move into Kylo, but he found himself restrained, unable to move.

He couldn’t even speak through their connection, he was overwhelmed and angry and turned on and he just wanted more and more of Kylo even as Kylo rode him, the knight’s thick cock slapping his torso, sliding in and out of his mouth with each movement of Ren’s body.

Kylo Ren watched him, watched the flush in his cheeks spread down his chest. There were ways a man could gain control, or lose it. He could see his own hand shaking with the effort of keeping the illusion going. With a low groan, he watched Hux’s lips move around something that wasn’t there, mouth responding to the girth of a cock that wasn’t actually in his mouth. He imagined the jungle against Hux’s back, he imagined the man’s heat melting snow.

He drove himself down onto Hux’s cock, grabbing one of the man’s hand to wrap around his own.

«This isn’t just your time, Arrik,» he growled into his head. His outstretched fingers tightened, forcing the sensation down to the back of Hux’s throat as he clenched his muscles around him.

Arrik could hardly breathe as Kylo fucked him. He was so strung out, Kylo was unrelenting, strong and powerful. He was choking on Kylo’s dick as the knight took everything from him. He gasped, putting both hands tight around Kylo’s cock and jerking him off.

Kylo moaned as he moved on Hux, feeling the strain in his thighs from raising himself before sitting back on him again. The atmosphere in the room changed slightly, the transparisteel unable to withstand the intensity of the Force he was radiating; the windows rattled, almost vibrating.

“Say something,” he muttered almost indistinctly. “Say something.”

Hux was literally choking on the man’s dick and he had the gall to ask him to say something? He couldn’t even growl, it came out as an incoherent noise. He closed his eyes, tears forming at the corners.

«You fuck like you hate me,» Hux was gasping, so close he felt like he was being wrung out. He sent along the feeling of heat in his belly, the tightness around his cock was overwhelming, too hot by far. He tightened his hands, trying to push up into Kylo as he started to cum.

Kylo wanted to hate him; he wanted to hate him and blame him for turning him into this. He wanted to blame him and hate him and kill him, choke him to death just the way Hux had made him kill that bounty hunter back on Tyrakos.

The Force sensation changed for Hux; there was no phantom cock in his mouth, just that intense pressure on his throat, the feeling of his windpipe being crushed, closed off. Kylo remembered Ben’s shame and Hux’s arousal in that dusty port. Now they were here. He wanted to hate him but couldn’t, wanted to kill him but wanted to feel him finish inside him more.

“Now,” he commanded. “Kriffing end it now!”

Hux gasped for air, pulling Kylo down, drawing blood as he drove himself deep into the other man. He came with a thready moan, arching up, pinned down by the Force around his neck and Kylo’s body on his hips.

Kylo felt it, the release and the asphyxiation together as a sort of emotion. Muscles tight, he pushed himself down onto Hux’s cock, edging himself on pain as much as arousal. Just another minute more...just the anticipation of making himself wait that moment longer…

He grunted his release, giving up his Force hold on Hux’s throat as he came onto the man’s chest. Distantly around him, he heard the effect of his orgasm on the room; the cracking noise of straining shelves, the datasticks and devices that shook themselves free of their resting places on flat surfaces. He leaned over Hux, hearing the counterpoint of their breathing and concentrating on that only.

Hux knew that Kylo got off on causing him pain as much as he got off on the pleasure that echoed in between them. Their connection was thick with it, emotions and sensations that Hux wouldn’t be able to describe to anyone else.

He could feel the rough scratch along his throat, and he drew his hands down Kylo’s thighs lightly. Shifting on the bed, he sighed, still feeling the aftershocks of everything between them. Right now he had no further ambitions, no grand ideas, he was caught in this, in Kylo and everything that he was.

Hux wrapped his arms around Kylo’s waist, turning them over on the mattress so they were facing each other. Blinking, he watched Kylo’s face, committing the harsh angles, the spots, his mouth, all of it to memory.

«I would have drawn you out,» Hux sighed, reaching up with the arm not pinned down by Kylo’s frame to push his unruly hair back, off his forehead. «Tortured you a while longer.»

Kylo blinked slowly, taking a slower, deeper breath. The redness of Hux’s eyes, the marks he could feel forming on the other man’s body although he couldn’t see them yet. How could he hate this man? Some of the blame was his, of course, but Ben couldn’t condemn someone else for his choices.

«I’d have killed you if we’d waited any longer,» he said without exaggeration.

Humming, Hux shrugged lazily, still enjoying their closeness. Their connection was open and private, intimate and exposing. For Arrik, nothing compared to Kylo. He was a galaxy, beyond comprehension. Together they were something even larger. He tugged on Kylo’s hair and almost smiled.

«Next time,» he said quietly, “I’ll wring you out.“

The smile was slightly more apparent on Kylo’s generous mouth. What a promise. He shared his own emotions, his comfort now compared with the intensity of a few minutes ago, that killing wave he’d ridden for a while to a different sort of high.

He didn’t say anything, but he reached over to brush his fingers against the sharper end of the scar high on Hux’s chest.

Taking a deep breath, Arrik tamped down the shudder when Ren’s fingers brushed over the still sensitive skin. He swallowed and closed his eyes tightly, turning his face into the pillow.

He didn’t need to tell Kylo that he was falling asleep, but he slid a little closer to him, ignoring the drying mess in between the two of them. He would never admit to relying on Ren, but the convenience of turning out the lights and pulling fresh covers from the closet without moving from the bed seemed far more appealing than standing up to do it himself.

«Take care of all that,» he murmured, pulling his arm back to rest over Kylo’s thick torso.

“If you think I’m licking up my own spooge, you have another thing coming,” Kylo said aloud, a flick of his wrist calling a towel over. Without complaining, he wiped up the mess they’d made. The rest would have to wait. Looking down at Hux, he realized that the man was already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't forget! come say hi on tumblr, tigernoir.tumblr.com


	6. Chapter 6

The room had been dark for an hour as Kylo Ren fought to empty his mind of the daily mundane that accumulated during the rotation. He was used to listening to everything, even peering into thoughts he shouldn’t have been, collecting all of it. A smuggler’s habit, Ben Solo’s trick. You never knew when something would come in handy; random facts had saved his ass more times than he could count, and the sudden memory of a whisper at the bar had gotten him to the right place at the wrong time and won him whatever prize he was looking for before someone else arrived at the right time and found their quarry gone.

But now those whispers didn’t matter. There was gossip on the base; you never got a group of sentients together in one place without it, but much of what passed between officers and troopers had nothing to do with him. It didn’t touch him in the strange rarified atmosphere he inhabited as Kylo Ren. Petty squabbles and clandestine liaisons were no longer the tips to a successful run for him; he wasn’t looking for a better deal or a new supplier. The only information that really mattered came to him from his Knights, from the Supreme Leader, or from the base’s commander, officially or while they were insulting one another pleasantly, heads on a shared pillow.

So he had to let the rest of it go, but an overactive mind and a lifetime of habit made it difficult. In the darkness, there was nothing to look at. The room was silent apart from the usual hum of the climate control and ventilation. But meditation had never been his strong suit, and his mind could supply a thousand things to distract him, from the simplest wondering what his evening meal would be to thinking about his mother’s tone of voice when she said good bye.

He groaned aloud, shifting on his knees and rubbing his hands on his thighs. Back to the start, back to picturing the dark that was beyond black and the roaring stillness that lay at the center of it…

«You are having a very hard time with this.» Mar’s voice came across like silk, brushing across the edges of Kylo’s consciousness gently. Her gravelly tone was lost in psychic transfer, but her dry amusement was clear. «You get quite loud when you’ve lost patience.»

Kylo exhaled through his nose, opening his eyes in the dark. Of course she would hear him; their connection had been re-opened and he had no reason to guard from her right now. She was still his most trusted Knight. Granted, he wasn’t as transparent as he had been, but part of that was his shift in leadership. Mar didn’t seem to mind, and their relationship continued as though nothing had happened.

«The depth of your meditation has consistently eluded me,» he acknowledged without any actual sense of shame. «Is it morning for you?»

«I can see a sun or two.» She took a deep breath, and when she opened her eyes she was there, in front of Kylo. Her old magic gave her enough strength to see across the Starkiller system, and she made a humming noise, closing her eyes again. «What disturbs you, Lord Ren?»

He found that her fond sarcasm didn’t raise his anger. It was relaxing to hear her as she had always been. With an edge.

«The aimless excitement on the base as we wait for another target. There has been much emphasis put on the weapon. I don’t like sitting idle, and I don’t want to wait here any longer.»

«Is that all?» She smiled slightly. «Sit on your hands to keep still, my Lord, that might help.»

Kylo sighed again, since she was the only one who knew and had already seen through his attempt at calm and stillness.

«Have you had any action on your patrol? After you put down Ka’alith and the rabble he’d raised?»

«No,» she answered, still breathing slowly, floating in her cabin. She held air in her lungs for almost a minute, her head tilted up, her hair haloed around her. «I am monitoring the system. It’s almost relaxing.»

«I didn’t know you were looking for relaxing,» Kylo said wryly.

«I will accept respite when given.»

Kylo Ren leaned forward over his knees, stretching out his back and resting his forehead on the ground, arms out in front of him. He was tired of this, this ceaseless waiting. If he was required to rest, he’d rather he was injured. This made him think of Hux and the jagged line down his chest. His thoughts were everywhere. He needed a fight.

«So I shouldn’t re-assign you? Is that what you’re telling me?» he said, allowing himself a small smirk.

Mar hummed a little, reflecting on what Kylo said, his thoughts, what he was saying, what he wasn’t. She got flashes and ideas of his consciousness as she always had. Some of it was intentional, and some things he hid with a natural skill he must have continued to practice from childhood. This all occurred in the space of seconds.

«I am monitoring the space. It is an exercise in power.» She didn’t mention that she saw a scar, something about injury inflicted. Instead she reached out, putting her hand on the back of his head, imagining her fingers in his hair. The Zabrak took another deep breath, sending peace and the image of a precipice along their connection.

She felt as if she were on the edge of the universe, as if there was everything before and behind her. Mar stretched her hands out, held the galaxy in her chest, stars in her mouth. She was the guardian, the destroyer. Meditation was so simple for her, so immersive and connected.

Her ancestors, the nearly forgotten Dathomiri Nightsisters, were used to this balancing act along the dark side. The key was to understand the deep, to breathe in the heavy air, and surround yourself in a vacuum. To know the void and love it. She sent all of this along, her being and non-being, expansive and miniscule.

«Perhaps you just need to understand,» Mar murmured, voice gravelly as she kept her hand in his hair, even as she imagined herself standing on the edge of space.

Kylo shook his head, taking a deep breath as he knelt up again. He understood, that wasn’t the problem. It was the fear of letting go completely, wondering what he would be then.

«Perhaps it’s time for me to leave this base and find a battle that needs me,» he said finally, sitting back and stretching his legs out in front of himself.

There was a pause, and a few parsecs away, Mar sat up. Something was rippling, there was a strange disruption. She pressed her mouth and took a deep breath. «Perhaps the battle may be coming to you.»

Kylo Ren frowned, closing his eyes tightly as her voice changed in his head. He could feel it as well, the strange movement in the Force that warned him when something was happening, something was pulling out of its staid path and entering a new reality. A decision, a change, a direction.

«What is it?» he asked quickly. «Do you know the origin of this disturbance?»

«I can’t tell.» Mar was frowning, and her unease was obvious. «It’s coming fast. Prepare for your war, Lord Ren, it arrives with vengeance.»

Kylo swore under his breath, hearing his voice muffled and sudden in the still room. There was something familiar about the way the currents had shifted, and it wasn’t just a spike of adrenaline that told him a fight was close.

Firing the new weapon had done more than just show the galaxy the type of power the First Order possessed, it had also spectacularly revealed the hiding spot Starkiller had silently inhabited during its construction. Now the origin of the destructive beams was easy to triangulate, even as the planet-crushing energy beams travelled at light speeds across the universe. While the seat of the universal government had been obliterated with the Hosnian system, Kylo Ren knew that his mother had gone back to her rebellious origins. It sucked to be from a family of people who couldn’t leave well enough alone.

«Contact the other Knights and gather them together. Stay away from Starkiller and await my orders,» he almost growled, standing up and grabbing his helmet from the bed where he’d tossed it. The lock hissed shut as he left his rooms, stalking toward the control center.

Mar was sitting straight up, frowning deeply. She swallowed and nodded. «Should we set our nav computers towards Kinath-I?»

«You can...but this will likely be an air battle. The rebels cannot make it onto the base,» Kylo told her, shoving past a group of slower moving officers on their way to their next shift.

«We will lock on the system.» Mar stood up, heading to talk with the pilots. «I will convene the Knights. Focus on your adversaries.»

Kylo Ren sent an affirmative back to Mar, trusting that she’d handle everything on her end. If she had questions, she’d either sort the answers out on her own or come back to him for them. Otherwise, he could just put the Knights out of his head for the moment. He strode into the command center, petty officers scattering out of his way.

He looked around for Hux, trying to immediately take in everything that was happening around him. Turning to one of the officers, he gestured impatiently with a black-gloved hand. The woman watched his fingers as though looking for a visual of the power she feared.

“The general.” A demand and inquiry, voice low and growly through his vocoder.

The officer swallowed and took a step back, pointing down to a larger meeting room. “The Engineer Corps is updating the commanders on the weapon’s status.”

“The status,” Kylo said dismissively, waving her away. “They idle while attack is imminent.” He stalked the length of the room, waving the meeting door open with a sharp gesture as he strode inside. “General.”

Hux stood up immediately, the engineer shutting her mouth in the middle of her report, cut off mid-sentence.

“I trust this is dire,” Hux said through a tight jaw. “Lord Ren?”

“How long until you attack the rebel base? You have the coordinates now, correct?” Kylo demanded, his attention focused solely on Hux. He didn’t let himself think, he only let himself act, react, move forward. The rebel base was nothing, wasn’t full of people, wasn’t a place he could find himself.

Hux’s hands were still on the table, fingers spread across the plastiglass. “We are recharging, turning towards the rebellion.”

“You turn too slowly. You are already attacked.” He didn’t know if anything would even show up on the monitors yet, but he could feel it. The imminence of it, of danger and potential futures collapsing, was vibrating through the Force and knocking against his ribs.

“We will alert our pilots to be at station and commit power cells to reinforcing the fields,” Hux assured him, standing up straight and putting his hands behind his back. He glanced at the rest of the engineers in the room and then looked back to Ren. “Do you have additional information?”

Hux continued, without speaking. «Do we need to have a private discussion?»

Kylo turned to look at the general, as though trying to meet his eyes even through the helmet. «There is an imminent rebel attack. It’s not information you’ll get through your machinery. Be ready for...» His mental voice trailed off as he turned his head. There were no windows in the smaller meeting room, but he seemed to be looking for something.

“Out.” Hux snapped at the remaining engineers. “Prepare to monitor the weapon for a second attack.”

The corps of scientists gathered up their datapads and almost fled the meeting room. Hux nodded at Ren as the door closed behind the last engineer.

“I will deploy the fleet,” Hux said, frowning slightly. “Battle readiness. Do you have any additional details?”

“None,” Kylo said, turning back to Hux after a moment. “I have to go.” He licked his lips, voice distracted. “I’ll...be back.” Out into the cold, out into the snow and the bare trees and brittle stone.

Hux tilted his head to the side, confused for a second. He pulled a datapad towards him and sent out a couple alerts. Quickly, he sent another message to Colonel Elmisand on the _Faultless_ and Mitaka on the _Finalizer_ , speaking as he typed. “Where will you be?”

Kylo swallowed, trying to fit his words into answers while a bright Force signature burned into his mind with more and more certainty. How was she here? He turned his head again, too distracted to answer. The unmarked snow had been scarred with depressed footprints. How?

“I need an answer, Ren.”

Kylo turned to face him again, movements sharp. How could he stay in this room when she was out there?

He gestured vaguely, turning toward the wall again.

“I need more of an explanation,” Hux snapped, words clipped and harsh. “ If the attack is looming I need you on base.”

“I have to go,” Kylo murmured. “You don’t understand.” How could Hux understand this, the Force bond of training together, meditating together, knowing how the galaxy felt as so few others did?

“Answer me!” Hux demanded, focused on Ren. There were alerts and notifications popping up continuously on his datapad. “I have just dispatched my entire fleet based on a gut feeling—I deserve more than vagaries.”

Kylo turned back to Hux again, searching his face and settling his eyes on the general’s. They were intense and cold… they were winter eyes.

“You have to look to the air; you knew you gave away the base’s coordinates when you fired. They’ve decided to bring the battle to you. Did you expect no consequences, no repercussions? Believe me, Arrik, there are always bitter fruits after a hot rain.” He swallowed and shook his head. “This is as much warning as you could possibly have.”

“Where are you going, Ren?” Hux took a step forward, frowning. “I will attend my station, but where will you be?”

Kylo growled, making an abortive movement with his hand. “Out there,” he said fiercely.

Hux nodded, keeping his eyes on Kylo, ignoring his flashing datapad. “Keep our link open, I need to be able to reach you.”

Kylo met his eyes, though Hux wouldn’t know it, hidden as his were behind the dark lenses.

Hux pressed his mouth and shook his head, picking up his datapad. He didn’t have time for mind games with Kylo Ren. “I’m needed.” His voice was low as he passed him, though he glanced over his shoulder as the doors opened. «I want an explanation later.»

Kylo wanted him suddenly, wanted to crush him against the wall and feel his body fighting against his, against a superior strength he could never beat. But from behind this mask, he couldn’t kiss him in that way they had, where they both ended up with bruised mouths and torn lips, teeth crashing and breathing loud in one another’s ears.

He couldn’t even touch him when he was like this. The light and dark were pulling again, and it hurt him in places that shouldn’t have felt pain.

«You’ll have one,» he murmured into Hux’s thoughts, a vague promise.

Hux quickly went through the base, already sending messages to the colonels and corporals, reassuring them of his orders, reviewing the battle readiness protocols as the stormtroopers and pilots ran to their stations.

There was something to be said for the efficiency of an army when orders were unquestioned. It was satisfying to see everything slide quickly into place, the march of troopers through the base as they arrived at their posts. They were prepared, and for about ten minutes, Hux was involved in a holodiscussion with Elmisand and Mitaka as the two Destroyers circled Starkiller.

Then came the inevitable shudder through the holos from the Destroyers, and alarms began to blare through the base.

“The Resistance has launched an attack,” Elmisand said quickly, turning in her chair. “Starfighters have appeared in the system. Two large heavy cruisers, another warship. They have brought their entire fleet against us.”

“Send out the TIEs, we have a small group of starfighters that will circle around and attack from behind,” Hux ordered quickly, nodding to the Head Engineer. “Our shields are at full capacity and we have tapped into our cell reserves. It will take an hour hour to fully recharge the weapon; have navcomputers on standby with a safe microjump at the fire minute.”

He resisted the urge to reach out to Kylo Ren, and instead stepped back, looking at a few satellite feeds that showed a visual of the starfighters’ attack. The Resistance was well armed and competent, but the First Order had numbers and superior firepower. Hux was confident this attack was the last, desperate act of a feeble opposition.

Kylo Ren didn’t even register the incoming battle above him; he didn’t care how the rebels had figured out how to get past the shields, though a distant part of him recognized it had to be a traitor. Inside information was always the downfall of even the strongest fortress. For a second, he wondered if he had done it, if he had inadvertently given something away to his mother, or had sent a message somewhere in a moment of weakness. Was he, again, both traitor and hero, betrayer and betrayed?

It didn’t matter. There was only the moment now and the knowledge that someone was waiting for him out in the snow. Not Hux-- he could feel Arrik’s anxiety, carefully hidden from everyone else on the base, through the strange bond they had. But this was older and it called to a different place in him.

The snow was deeper the further he went, and his heavy boots sank into it as he walked. The bitter cold of Starkiller seeped through his many layers and touched his skin, making the nervous sweat on the back of his neck immediately icy and sharp.

“I know you’re here,” he said finally, stopping in a small copse of bare trees, their trunks black against the snow. He didn’t speak loudly; there was no need. She’d hear him.

From behind a tree, Rey stepped out calmly; she hadn’t really been hiding. She was waiting. Her hair was pulled back tightly, which wasn’t unusual for her, and she wore traditional Jedi robes, dark and heavy. Her brown hair and the robes were flecked with snow, which stood out pale against them. Her mind was tightly guarded, and her mouth was pressed into a thin line, jaw set. There was something wild about her that had never quite left Jakku behind, no matter how long she’d been away from the dry, hostile planet.

“Are you?” Her voice rang out like a bell. Clear and faithful.

Seeing her now, he felt the pain of loss, a brief stab that was gutting at the same time. That should have been him. The distance between them seemed wider the longer they stood.

“You see me.” His words, not his voice. Kylo inhaled, hearing the helmet’s filter whir to life as the air rushed in through the intake. It was a good reminder. Helmet, grandfather, Kylo Ren. Not Ben Solo. Not someone she knew.

“I don’t know what I’m seeing.” Rey took a step back, settling in a ready stance. “What are you doing here? How did you even end up in this mess?”

“We all have paths to follow.” Kylo stopped, the ragged shoulder wrap flapping as the wind picked up. He was much less careful with his clothing; as long as it hid him, it did its job. “You should go. Now. You shouldn’t be here.” He was careful not to say her name, worried about all the memories that would dredge up from the place he’d tried to bury them.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Rey insisted, her feeling finally betraying her voice. She shook her head, not looking away from Kylo. Her emotions were written plainly on her face, even if she hid them from the Force. “I have a ship, I can take you home. We don’t have to stay! It’ll be all right, Ben, I promise.”

For a moment, he was stunned, unable to move or reply at the sound of his name. He hadn’t forgotten it, but when was the last time anyone had said it aloud? It had been stricken from records, from his identity; even Hux called him “Ren” exclusively. One letter difference, but it was all the difference to him. Rey said it so naturally, because it was the only thing she’d ever called him, from the day she’d come to the Temple and had been introduced to her fellow Padawan. Ben had never had siblings, and the addition of the fierce little orphan to his life had let him feel what it would have been like to have a sister.

“Don’t say that name. I don’t know…” What? Was he going to flat out lie to her? She’d know him through the Force, no matter what he called himself, what weapon he carried, how he covered his face. “You should leave.”

“Your name? Ben Solo?” Rey took another step forward, holding her hand out to him. Her lightsaber was clipped to her belt, hidden under the robes. “Come with me, please. Please! We can go home, Ben, we can go right now.”

“That’s not home!” he yelled suddenly, the fury finally spiking up through his torso. It burned, it tore. “Where would ‘home’ be exactly? Wherever I stop for more than a single rotation? Where someone tells me to stay and ‘get better?’” The helmet muffled his words, keeping the sharpness out of them, deepening the tone and smoothing the edges.

“I’m trying to help you!” Rey screamed over the wind, fury and pain making her voice crack. Her walls faltered for just less than a second, but it was enough for him to feel her desperation. “I can’t do anything less!”

“Help me? How are you helping me?” He shook his head, remembering the helmet hid his face, that he didn’t have to share anything with her. He could feel her emotions, was nearly rocked back on his heels by them. When had she ever hidden anything from him? And when had she not come to him, when he was wracked by nightmares and crouching at the edge of the stream that ran by the Temple, with her little fingers combing through his tangled hair as though braiding it would also set his mind to rights?

Rey’s jaw worked as she watched the man who was like her cousin. She took a step forward, no longer ready to attack. “Ben, please. Come back to the Temple.”

“There is nothing for me there, Rey. You know he can’t help me, can’t teach me the things I need. Everything I tried to do, I was told it’s too much. Here I can embrace all of my skills, all of my power.” Kylo Ren (he desperately needed to be Kylo Ren) heard his voice nearly crack and hoped she didn’t hear Ben Solo in the spaces between his words.

“Are you listening to yourself? You sound like…” She paused, blinked and took another step back. There was something different, something in the air, in his stance, in the set of his shoulders. She had no idea who Ben was anymore, she didn’t recognize this man in front of her. But he was still her cousin, and he couldn’t be so lost. Wasn’t that at the heart of Master Skywalker’s teachings? There was no end to faith, there was no end to family.

“Please.” Her voice was soft, barely carried over the wind that picked up around them. It was starting to snow harder now, and the flakes caught in her hair, nestled into the creases of her robes as though drawing white outlines. She took a deep breath and swallowed. “Please come with me.”

“Why?” The question hung between them. “Because my mother wants me to? Because my old Master thinks I’ve lost my way?” She couldn’t give him any reasons, he realized, that weren’t the reasons he’d gone back, over and over, to patch up wounds in his soul that never healed fully. It was just the same thing: because he was supposed to, because his temper could be dangerous, because decisions he made on his own were often disastrous. But what did any of that have to do with him? When would his life be someone’s priority, for half a second?

“Because I’m asking you!” Rey yelled, frowning deeply. Above her, the star that Kinath-I orbited seemed to burst, tendrils of light shooting through space, falling onto the surface of Starkiller, directly into the core cylinder that would reform the heat and ions and create the hyponuclear fission needed to shoot the radiant beam through hyperspace towards D’Qar.

Rey knew this, because she knew what was housed on D’Qar.

“Do you know where they’re aiming now? Who you’re killing next?” Her voice cracked again, and she reached for her lightsaber but dropped her hand, taking another step forward. “They’re going after everyone! Your family is being hurt! Your family is next!”

“Then go somewhere else,” he said harshly. “Tell my mother to leave. Tell my uncle to go back to his hiding hole. I didn’t matter before, why are you here now?”

“I’m here for you!” Rey took another step back, shaking her head, damp tendrils of brown hair sticking to her face. “Look around! Can’t you feel it?” She took a deep breath, and her heartbeat seemed to stop for a second, a blink, a reflection of the emptiness of the planet. “Can’t you feel anything?”

For a moment, he reached out to her with the Force, unable to stop himself as he felt the kinship between them. It was worse than the memories, which could be ignored and pressed down into depths that were tarry and lost. But here in the face of their sameness, the core fire of him leaping up as he stepped forward as well.

She felt it, the death of this place, the hollow center and gaping wound in the Force that had been left when the First Order clawed the moon apart and turned it into a piece of dead rock with a weapon for a heart. She could feel the wrongness of it, the way he could, the way he could not convince himself that it was good and right.

“I feel more than anyone. And all I’ve been told was to clamp it down and ignore it, whether for the Jedi or because my family doesn’t know what to do with emotions in general,” he said angrily. He hated how the vocoder muffled his voice; his hand twitched by his side, fingers repeating the motion to unlock the mechanism over and over.

“Who are you?” Rey’s voice was raw as she screamed her question. Her breath caught in her throat and her fingers brushed her belt, seeking her lightsaber.

Kylo didn’t remember doing it; he wasn’t aware of his own movement until the helmet made a muffled thud against the snow at his side. The landscape was brighter and darker at the same time to his uncovered eyes, somehow, with the floodlights from the base somewhat reflected by the snow and somewhat blocked by the trees. But he watched Rey with nothing but air and their shared past between them and took a deep breath of the crisp, lung-chilling air.

Rey’s frown deepened and she shook her head. She knew him, had watched this face as he grew from boy to man. Her eyes flit over Kylo’s face, over his eyes and down his nose and mouth. His features were so familiar, a brother, a confidant, a teacher. She swallowed and took another deep breath.

“Ben, please.” Her voice was softer, her eyes wide as she gripped her lightsaber tightly. She held her hand out to him, waiting. “You don’t need to do this.”

At the sound of his name, his jaw tightened. He shook his head once, feeling that tearing sensation in his chest again as he’d felt it when he couldn’t make up his mind between the worlds he was supposed to inhabit.

Above them the star screamed. The hiss of snow melting turned into a furious hum, and beneath their feet the plates of the world began to expand and contract in a sick semblance of breathing as its core heated up.

“We need to go!” Rey took a few steps forward, hand out. “Now!”

“No!” Kylo shook his head, hand moving instinctively to his belt. His fingers brushed over the hilt and his other hand clenched into a fist. “Don’t you understand? Rey, this is the new order of things. This is a world we can build, a galaxy we can shape, rather than just waiting on the fractured ideas of the past to be shoved together with our elders’ glue. Stay with me,” he offered with sudden desperation. “I can show you the things I’ve learned, the powers I’ve discovered. Let me teach you things our old Master forbade us to know not because they were evil, but because he didn’t understand them.”

“We don’t have time to argue right now!” Already the light from the sun was fading and the planet was shuddering beneath them, small juttering tremors. She looked up, worried, and then took another few steps towards Kylo, hand out as if to grab onto his cowl and pull him bodily along. “Come on.”

Kylo stared at her hand. Even now, she wouldn’t listen. It wasn’t about arguing, it was about being there with more than one’s body. To be completely honest and completely present, and even now with the light dimming around them, she was just like them.

“No. Rey, we can’t waste our powers like we have been, tucked away on some nowhere planet, smuggling thermofabrics through the trade runs. We could be so much more. We could have everything and help General Hux build something new. Not even this, not even the Order. We wouldn’t have to be constrained by this Empire-worshiping model either. Something...new.” He shook his head, blinking as the winds on the snowy surface of the planet picked up. It was snowing in earnest now, the type of strangely heavy flakes that caught in eyelashes and created a haze over everything.

“They’re killing people! Killing planets, destroying all the things that we swore to protect! Life! They’re evil, Ben, and you know it!” Rey was scrambling for reasons, trying to find an explanation that would reach Ben. It had never been difficult before. She glanced around as another tremor shot through the planetoid. Glancing up at Kylo she swallowed, taking another step forward, close enough to touch him, her hand shaking. “We need to go now.”

“What they have out there isn’t life! You were taught to fear the dark side, but Rey...Rey, it’s all bantha shit. This is where our power lies, this is where we can find our true selves. I was scared too, believe me, but this...it’s not…” Ben Solo pressed his mouth and Kylo Ren pushed the words past his lips. “There must be sacrifices. You see oppression and I get it, I do. But that’s only what’s right in front of you. We have plans, Rey. The plans are...vast. I want you here too, to be part of that future with us. This is the way to freedom.”

“The dark side of the Force isn’t power, it’s weakness! It’s giving in!” She shook her head, taking another step back and raising her lightsaber hilt. “Maybe you’re right, Ben,” Rey said, almost choking on the words, eyes huge, pushing down the fear and sadness, focusing on the clarity of conviction that she found in her unsteady heart, in her strong arms. “Maybe I don’t know you.”

“Don’t just repeat his words! His convictions. Rey!” Ben shook his head, the snow falling more heavily between them. He could feel the attacks on the base, the bright lights in the Force that were the rebel pilots above the surface. “Think for yourself. Giving in? It’s not giving in. It’s hard to go that way, you think I don’t -” He could hear his own desperation coloring his voice. Of anyone who could have come here for him, she should have understood. “The dark side isn’t weakness...it’s...it’s harder than you can imagine to give up…” He set his jaw, hand on his weapon. “I won’t leave with you. If you won’t fight with me, you’re my enemy.”

“I’m not your enemy,” Rey said. Her body was tense, her hand tight around the hilt of her lightsaber. “But maybe you deserve a fight.”

“Deserve a fight?” Kylo Ren unclipped the lightsaber from his belt. It immediately warmed in his gloved hand; he knew the feel of it better than the hand of any other person. “Yes. Yes, don’t we all?”

He ignited his lightsaber and the deep red was reflected back from the snow and the silver detailing of his helmet where it lay on the ground. It juddered in his hand, the ragged breath of its power familiar and strangely comforting. Where he couldn’t find peace elsewhere, he could find purpose as a warrior.

Rey’s eyes widened as she saw the red blade, the broken hilt, and she took a step back before igniting her own lightsaber, the green glow even colder in the darkness that was starting to overcome the entire planet. She lifted her arms up, form at the ready position.

“Why are you doing this?” she tried, one last time.

“This? I am trying to set things right, Rey. Things that have been broken since before we were born. It’s my...it’s our responsibility to put them right. If you don’t understand that, then you’re an obstacle to the true peace the First Order is building.” Everything in his body screamed to cut the power to the blade, to turn away from a fight with her. All his training said the battle was right, but the deepest parts of him choked on the wrongness of it.

“You don’t set things right by killing billions of people!” Rey said forcefully, shaking her head. “That isn’t peace!”

“It got the attention that the Senate has been unable to garner for the past twenty years. It got the respect the Senate hasn’t been able to gain ever!” Ben yelled back, hearing his voice crack against the strange privacy they shared at that moment. He changed his grip on his lightsaber, sliding one foot back.

“Are you going to keep doing this?” Rey’s voice faltered even as she tightened her grip. “Is this going to keep happening?”

“There is no way back from here. The way forward lies in strength.” He pressed his mouth, seeing her face glowing in the green of her blade, the stress making lines by her eyes and between her brows.

It didn’t matter now. It couldn’t.

The snow seemed to flash red at his side when he swung his lightsaber in a wide arc, feeling the momentum in his step forward. The power in the blade would have unbalanced a smaller man, but Kylo Ren knew how to compensate for it, using it to push him forward. The dark side of the Force hummed around his temples, running through him. He anticipated Rey’s defense, remembering the many times he’d stepped forward to spar with her during their training.

Rey almost buckled as she was attacked, her arms up as Kylo Ren threw his considerable weight and strength behind the blow. She grit her teeth and turned, angling her lightsaber down and stepping away from Ren, keeping her guard up.

Kylo’s moves were different, his stance lower; this was not the man she remembered from the Temple. She swallowed, eyes wide, and steeled herself. She was not the same woman either. She was not a child in the sparring ring. The Force was everywhere, even here, and she found it. Setting her stance, she swung her lightsaber down and around before jumping towards Kylo again, swinging from the side.

He could feel the changes in her attacks, the boldness where there had been childish reticence in the past. Or perhaps it was just that he had never faced her like this; sparring was not the same as actually fighting with someone. Their past seemed to be a third in the fight, a thing they both sought to avoid when their plasma blades hummed through the air in certain movements.

Kylo Ren (who was no longer Ben Solo, it was easier now) felt the surety of his swings as he advanced again with the wide, long blows and spins that kept him more difficult to hit and always on the offensive. His aggression pushed her back another few steps.

He was stronger than she was, but she knew leverage, had been training with Luke and the Temple, and her steps were sure and fast. She felt the anger in Kylo Ren, but managed to block each swing as she stepped back. He was becoming predictable, furious, and only fought to destroy.

She blocked his downward swing and spun, pushing him back with the force and jumping in the follow through, going for his arm with a yell. But he knew her moves—they’d been trained by the same man—and he pulled back with remarkable grace, moving more easily than his size generally led people to believe. He slid his foot back, letting the glide of the snow underneath give him a sudden little burst of speed.

The crimson lightsaber flashed at his right as he brought it around in a wide arc. This time, he didn’t just let it remain by his side, but swung it overhead and down onto her guard, pushing her back with the Force at the last minute. He immediately hated himself for the weakness and pursued Rey back onto the trampled snow, swinging his saber again and scarring the tree he walked past.

He fought like a beast cornered, and Rey hissed as she blocked his swings once, twice, and was driven to her knees by the third blow. She cried out and shoved him back with both hands, using the Force to give herself room to stand up and scramble away.

Underneath their feet the planet shuddered again, and in the distance explosions could be heard. Rey swallowed, looking above the treeline at the smoke that was rising from the edge of the base.

“It’s not too late,” she said quietly, watching Kylo, her lightsaber still up. “Ben?”

“Too late?” He could feel the planet shattering, its cicada-empty carcass brittle underneath him. Knees bent, he found his balance. Maybe they’d all die here, even Rey who was just light and lack of understanding. There was nothing else to say.

He attacked again, knowing she didn’t want to strike him and knowing he had to strike her. Each blow reverberated up his forearms when their lightsabers locked for a moment, and he could feel the kyber crystal fighting its purpose in its housing. Kylo Ren let the anger rise up in him above everything else, past morality and memory, then was knocked off his center when the planet was rocked with ground-destroying tremors again.

Rey bared her teeth and then yelled, pressing the small advantage and swinging her lightsaber, catching an angle and ripping the lightsaber away from Kylo Ren’s grasp. Her next jab caught his side along the ribs; he was only saved by the speed with which he pulled back. She made another noise and stepped forward again, lowering her blade. Another explosion, another tremor.

“You’re going to die here,” she said slowly, brows drawn down.

Maybe he’d always known he would. Kylo shook his head, snow-damp hair sticking to his sweat-damp skin.

“This isn’t the end, Rey.” He took the risk of looking away from her to where his lightsaber hilt lay piercing the snow. Extending one hand, he called to it, even as huge rocks to their left tore themselves apart. His mind wandered for a second, and he could smell the wet evenings and the ground he’d ripped apart for a general’s pleasure garden.

Rey jumped forward, bringing her lightsaber up while he was distracted. She refused to think about the consequences, the fact that she was delivering something like a killing blow, and the look that Ben gave her as he turned in surprise caught her. Her lightsaber moved upwards, and she sliced through the fabric of his shirt and the tip of her blade cut across his face, turning him suddenly, sending him reeling backwards.

She took another step forward, breathing hard, caught in the heat of battle, but a massive jerk shifted the ground, sending her to her knees. The surface clicked and ground together and with another roar, the world underneath them began to pull apart. Rey’s eyes went wide as she scrambled backwards, turning off her lightsaber in order to stand and run to the edge of safety, watching as the surface split open.

Swallowing, her eyes fixed on Ren, she took another step back. More explosions from the base, smoke, and the sound of engines shaking the trees.

“Ben, please!” she screamed over the gulf. She was so desperate, so intense. She knew the stories of other Jedi who had abandoned their fallen and it wasn’t in her, trained by Master Skywalker as she was. “I can save you!”

The world was darkness and stars, and he couldn’t take a deep breath. He could hardly take a breath at all; every inhalation was pain and blood. Ben grabbed for something and only found handfuls of snow. At least the cold was grounding and allowed him to focus.

Rey. He’d never heard that note to her voice before, and it seemed out of place here. He thought he might throw up, then the lights burst in strange patterns before his eyes and he felt consciousness slipping.

Shock, something told him distantly as he struggled to rise at least onto his elbow. There was a searing pain in his chest but he fought against it. Rey was backlit now, and he squinted against the brightness, unable to look directly at it. He felt and heard bedrock cracking as he coughed, feeling them as one sensation together.

Ben collapsed back onto the snow, knowing it should be cold but not able to distinguish it from the rest of the chill in his body. He could feel Rey in the Force, her particular burning signature. If he called out to her, if he just murmured her name, she’d hear him. She remembered those times too, he knew, roasting fruit over the fire and drizzling green honey over it, sparring together at the top of the waterfall that sang in thirds beneath them, making up ridiculous patterns in the stars over their heads at night. She’d come, if he called. She’d save him.

He couldn’t open his eyes. All he could feel was the second death of Starkiller Base echoing through his ribcage. His arm was outstretched, palm up and empty.

“Arrik.” It was only him exhaling painfully, it was no sound at all. Arrik. His mind was open because it didn’t matter. Ben Solo was glad that he hadn’t struck Rey. Kylo Ren could smell his burned flesh.

Rey took a step back, watching for something, but it seemed like there was nothing left for her to say. She shook her head and above her the engines of an X-Wing came even closer. She swallowed, and knew that she couldn’t stop, that she had to leave, the world was crumbling under her feet. The gulf between them was too wide, even for her.

She paused, took a deep breath, and then turned and ran.

Ben had never been this alone, he didn’t think. The rumble of the planet below him was a hollow sensation, and he knew that there was fire blossoming up in the gaping chasms created on the surface as the ground tore itself apart. He felt the ripping sensation in his soul, like wet silk tearing as the light and the dark snatched up pieces.

He thought, distantly, that he should be afraid. What part of the Force would want him once he was dead, a creature that never made up its mind? Another cough yanked him forward, and his back arched off the ground. His gloved hand was full of snow when his fingers tensed and grabbed futilely.

That’s when the sharp, dizzying bolt of panic cut through him. He wasn’t afraid to die.

He was afraid to die alone.

«Arrik.»

«Do not die.»

Arrik Hux’s voice cut through clearly, and he strode through the forest with three of the Elect. Phasma was up above, waiting for the signal. He turned slightly, following the tracks through the woods, hearing Kylo’s voice echo, his breath, his heartbeat.

The ground shuddered again, final death throes of a planet long dead. Hux began to run.

He found Kylo, lifted him with the help of one of the Elect, and they made their way to a clearing. Phasma brought the _Javelin_ down for them as across the wooded copse, an entire forest began to fall into the vacuum of the planet.

Lost, all lost.

Kylo was laid down in the captain’s berth, a med droid instantly in attendance. Hux left him and went to the viewport

They pulled away from Starkiller, and Hux’s mouth went dry as he watched his ambitions crumble. Starkiller had been his undertaking, but he knew that Snoke wasn’t done with him yet, that this would not end him. It couldn’t, though it was not so easy to let it go. His grand weapon. Hux closed his eyes as the _Javelin_ jumped into hyperspace. He took a deep breath and then stepped away from the viewport.

He turned and quickly went to his cabin, opening the door to look in on Kylo Ren. The droid had stabilized him, pressed a strip of bacta over his face and neck. Hux pressed a hand over his own scar, and sidestepped the droid, sitting down on the bench on the edge of the small room, staring at Kylo’s face.

«Starkiller is lost.»

Kylo Ren heard him, heard all the words that weren’t said. The work was lost, a home was lost. He heard the fear that trembled beneath General Hux’s hidden scar. A monumental failure for the First Order, some sort of punishment for the general who hadn’t foreseen it.

Yet both of them drew breath, though it was painful for him at least.

He didn’t know why he was alive. There had been blackness between then and now, and he’d supposed it could have been death, a death where he’d been left to wait by the Force. Speaking aloud was too much work.

«And are we dead?»

“We are not dead,” Hux said quietly. He shifted and closed his eyes, leaning over his knees.

There was silence between them for a minute. Kylo felt the darkness pressing in on him again and heard one of the machines near him react to it.

Rey would go back to the rebellion, to his uncle, to his mother. He could feel that she had survived the shockwave of Starkiller’s demise, and there was a strange sensation that he was there, somehow, hearing her say the words to Leia. General Organa...I’m so sorry.

It lost reality and permanence in his mind, these people he had known and loved. Loved. There was light rising in him, but it was diffuse and only scratched at him feebly. There was nothing, nothing.

I couldn’t bring Ben back.

He struggled to take a deep breath, but the rasping sound was removed from him.

Hux shifted, feeling something different and distant, and he knelt in front of the cot. He put his head on the side of the bed, letting the utter defeat wash over him.

“There is nothing left but us.”

Kylo’s fingers twitched where they lay by his side. They could leave, he thought with sudden panic. They could take the _Falcon_ and go, and the First Order would never find them. He felt the panel under his hand, smelled the particular combination of oil and burning and some kind of spice from the galley, the warm funk of Chewbacca, his own bargain cologne freshly splashed on. The cold numbness was creeping in from the edges and he couldn’t fight it.

Hux knew nothing of this, kneeling on the floor by the bed. He had his hands curled around the edge of the cot and set his jaw, feeling the strange need for escape that permeated through his shallow understanding of the thoughts galloping through the other man. They were not too open, not too close, but Hux wanted them closer right now.

“Speak to me.”

Wordless, floating, Kylo Ren opened his mind completely to Hux. He let him feel the enormity of it, the dead planet crumbling to space dust, his vision of his mother learning he was dead, the chance that Hux would be punished. And then...the encroachment of oblivion, something that was and was not the Force pulling him away. They could go, they could escape now. As soon as he had the strength…

Hux sighed, reaching across the bed to place his hand on Kylo’s arm. He could feel the intensity of hopelessness, but there were bigger things, greater endeavors. Were they not meant for greater things?

Weaker men would perish, but not Arrik Hux, but not Kylo Ren.

He sent across images, shared dreams, ambitions they barely dared to breathe. Arrik took a deep breath and dug his fingers into Kylo’s arm.

«We will not fall.»

Without words, from the dark, numb place that pulled him down, Ben Solo answered him.

He’d already fallen. There was only the vacuum between the stars in his lungs when he tried to inhale. There was only death; he was hollow and shattering as Starkiller had met its end.

Shifting closer, Hux let out a long, deep breath. He paused for a second and then stood up, taking a few steps back to lean against the wall of the makeshift medbay. He watched Kylo breathe slowly, frowning.

He pressed his mouth and tried not to think of the past, of the darker ambitions they once held, the status that Starkiller had afforded, now lost to him. Hux needed a minute to think. To plan. He pushed off the wall and turned, leaving Kylo Ren to recover. They had much work to do.

The room was silent to Ben once Hux had left. Painfully silent. He could feel himself choking on it, and the air felt as cold as it had when he’d felt Rey pulling away from him. She’d left him as his mother had left him as his father had left him as Hux had left him.

There was only one fire now, small and situated in a tight space under his sternum. It had come and gone, or perhaps it was that he simply ignored it sometimes and pretended it wasn’t there. The hatred that burned but didn’t warm. He opened his mouth to exhale, lungs suddenly full of smoke. There was nothing left for Ben Solo in the galaxy. And the only things Kylo Ren could see were things to burn.

He sat up with a huge intake of breath, relishing the pain that shot through his body. Ignoring the med droid and the distressed noises of some machine to his left, he held his hand to his injured side and dragged himself off the bed. Reaching up, he pulled the bacta strip off his face and dropped it to the floor.

The med droid rolled forward, several appendages raised calmingly.

“Sir, if you would please ret-” The grinding crush of its internal mechanism interrupted and ended its suggestion. Kylo Ren lowered his clenched hand and limped to the door and out into the hall.

“General,” he called hoarsely to the dark silhouette just about to turn the corner.

Hux stopped immediately, turning on his heel. He frowned as he went back to Ren, standing close in front of him to look up into his bare face.

“Knight,” Hux said softly, head tilted up. Immediately formal now that they were out from behind closed doors. “You should rest.”

“I didn’t say you could leave.” Kylo could barely recognize his own voice, the seething anger behind every word.

Hux’s jaw tightened and he glanced over his shoulder before looking back to Ren. He was infuriated by the comment. There was no movement as the _Javelin_ shot through hyperspace, no shudder or turn. It was unchangeable, hung in between places, in between times.

Hux spoke through gritted teeth. “We will both return to the cabin.”

“No need.” Kylo met Hux’s eyes, feeling the line of pain down his face as though it would split his head open. “Where are we going?”

Setting his jaw, Hux worked over the answer. He took a deep breath through his nose and kept his eyes on Kylo’s.

“We are to go to the Supreme Leader.”

“Are our plans still intact?” His voice was a quiet rumble, his throat scratchy and raw.

“I remain steadfast,” Hux said softly, frowning deeply. “Only our means stand in question.”

“The Force will provide.” Kylo held his gaze, then lifted his hand slightly. Without touching Hux, he shoved the general back against the dark durasteel wall of the narrow hallway.

“You forget yourself,” the general hissed, glaring at Kylo even as he stood still, unable to move.

“Do I?” Kylo asked as he stepped forward. His hand was still pressed hard to his side as though he was holding himself together, pulling himself into this person, this moment. He leaned down to kiss Hux hard, feeling his lip split when he hit Arrik’s teeth.

Hux’s eyes could set fire. “You do.”

“I remember myself, General,” Kylo murmured, mouth close to Hux’s. “You have the thing you thought you’d lost.” He could taste his own blood in his mouth; he wasn’t sure if it was from his split lip or whatever was broken inside him.

“I never thought you lost.” Hux said quietly, knowing somehow, knowing Kylo Ren so deeply. Even now he had to fight for Ren, and he would. He would not let the Knight slip from his grasp.

“Oh, Arrik.” Kylo said his name and felt it tremble between them for a second. “You still have your weapon.” Not the rickety uncertain blasters of the _Falcon_ , not the hollowed imitation the Imperial Death Stars. He lowered his hand slightly, and Hux felt the pressure lift. “Will you kiss me now?”

His patience run out, Hux growled under his breath and leaned in to kiss Kylo with more teeth than affection, more anger than anything else. He pushed Kylo back by his chest, snarling. “You overstep.”

The half-healed wounds on his torso screamed their agony and Kylo Ren caught his breath sharply, lungs feeling lined with shards of glass. He caught Hux’s wrist, not letting himself be pushed.

Hux felt it, the pain, the newness of the skin and the pull over his face and shoulder. It spread over his connection like a blanket, like burning snow. He set his jaw, eyes wide.

“What a team we make, Arrik. How many planets will die with our names echoing in the sudden void? How many fools will we no longer suffer?” He’d felt his own death in that room but now he was alive. Painfully alive, with the darkness of the Force too hot in his veins. He inclined his head slightly, pressing his mouth against Hux’s gloved knuckles. “I will tear up all the gardens of your discontent and create new graves for your dead.”

It seemed to catch in Hux’s throat, a living thing, Kylo choking him and not touching him, holding him and keeping him close. He nodded, keeping his eyes fixed on Kylo’s, bright and glittering in the dark; a rich brown, and umber, bloodshot, tired.

“Remember this,” Hux murmured, not pulling away. “In the days that come.”

“I’ve let many things die today, memories included. This will remain.” Kylo squeezed Hux’s wrist, then released him. He didn’t know if he could stay on his feet much longer, but he refused to collapse again in front of the general. He closed his eyes a moment too long for blinking. “I’ll rest now.”

He stepped back as he opened his eyes, making it a very distinct choice to turn and walk back down the hall, his walk determined and pained. There was comfort in knowing Hux was close, but he tried to make sure he took no comfort in it. His eyes were closed before he laid down, ignoring the defunct medical droid. Sleep didn’t come, but something close to it pulled him down to a hazy darkness again.

Hux watched him go, felt the struggle and pain, and let him have it. He waited a few seconds and then took a deep breath before closing his eyes and leaning against the wall. There was no time for this.

He stood up straight and went through the _Javelin_ , into the lounge. A few officers were there, clustered around a holomap. Their nervous movements and hushed voices irritated him. “Out,” Hux snapped, and the officers barely spared a glance towards each other before filing out of the room.

Hux set his jaw, and he stood still. It was hard to understand, almost incomprehensible, the scale of it. He glanced around the room and then walked over to the window, staring at the blue light that dimmed and faded through hyperspace. It was impossible.

He stood there for a long time, unmoving, hands behind his back, rage and fire consuming him. Everything taken away. Destroyed. He had tasted such glory, such achievement. To have it all utterly destroyed.

But it was not wiped clean. The history holos would record the power of Starkiller, the bright star that was too bright for the universe. He closed his eyes and tilted his head up, and for a second he saw it again, the radiant heat, the true nature of destruction. It was his, in his hands, in his grasp…

He took a step backwards and then went over to the couch, almost collapsing. As he took shallow breaths, his emotion caught him by surprise, and he covered his eyes with his hands. He was so angry, so full of it, but it didn’t choke him. It burned him, it consumed him. He would rise; Starkiller had been erased, but the loss would not destroy him, it would not destroy General Arrik Hux.

He didn’t allow himself to remain in that state for long. In the empty room, in the half-dark, lit barely by the bluish tone from the window, Hux ran his hands over his mussed hair, keeping his head bowed against the power and purpose of his renewed resolve. He took deep breaths and knew. He had his position, his power, he had Kylo Ren on his knees, Snoke trembling in some distant corner of the universe, and he would not be destroyed.

The general’s resolve traveled through a bond he might not have still realized was open, though for the Knight drifting on the cusp of consciousness it was diffuse and unclear. It echoed back his own anger and his own desperation to live for...something.

Kylo shifted uncomfortably on the flat, hard bed. The cut on his face was burning, even though it was being healed, even though the bacta should have felt cooling on his skin. Perhaps he was just burning up with everything that was inside of him. He knew he’d be asleep in a minute, though he doubted sleep was the right word for it.

For a moment, he was floating in nothing, then he felt himself somewhere very familiar. His bunk on the _Falcon_ , the way that one ridge of the mattress in its cubby rose higher than the rest and pressed against his lower back. He had a big job for Ohnaka tomorrow, and if he didn’t get up early he wouldn’t have time for breakfast.

That wasn’t right. The truth came to him after a moment. He had to drop off the First Order general before Chewie really started to worry. There was a cool hand on his cheek, the fingers long and almost hesitant to touch him; he recognized his mother’s perfume, a chemical re-creation of a flower that would never bloom in its native soil again. He wanted to tell her not to worry. He wanted to slap her hand away. He wanted her hand to linger.

The burning sensation increased again, inescapable heat that made the long lightsaber wounds on his body feel deep as the cracks in Starkiller’s surface before it had ripped itself apart. Leia’s touch was gone and he heard a pained noise he only recognized as his own voice afterward.

Then he felt the snow. It rose around him, the snow that hid his prey, his hunter. He exhaled slowly; it wasn’t snow, it was the cold drizzle of an Arkanis evening. The gloved hand against his scars, as he had touched Hux’s. Marked together as the future waited for them.

The darkness rose up and he fell down.

He would rise a singular man. He would be the way, and Arrik Hux, the will. He didn’t have to believe everything, just enough.

Ignoring the light that lingered somewhere above him still, Kylo Ren, at long last, turned to purpose.

**Author's Note:**

> A quick reminder! Our Tumblr is [here](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/tigernoir), and if you say Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find them and got sucked into the Gradence trashheap...you're not alone! So did we! Follow [our experimental Gradence/Gravebones fic here.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8769412/chapters/20111815) I'm super proud of this fic; it won't be the breadth of Corruption but it will be aesthetically On Point.


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